


the eight in your hand for the queen up your sleeve

by cptsuke



Series: stories from the same routine [3]
Category: The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's the new techie<br/>(getting drunk, plotting to destroy the sun, wearing boxers while shooting guns, avoiding the issues, threats of hair braiding and probably definitely not falling in some kind of love)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> the attempted noncon happens in ch 4, which i will warn for when the chapter arrives, its quite vague, but i like to warn for it nonetheless

 

"He's the new techie," Clay says as they walk in. The kid, and he is a kid despite the scrap of hairs on his chin that he boldly calls a goatee, carries a half empty duffle bag and three laptop cases with a suspicious amount of wires and duct tape sticking out of them  
  
They don't say anything, but their looks give them away.  
  
"Yeah, you should've see the looks the gate guards gave me, heh, Osama bin Jensen." He laughs at that, doesn't bother waiting for them to join in and throws his gear on the bed closest to Cougar's. Doesn't ask, obviously isn't the shy type.  
  
"I'm Jensen." He says again, just in case no one realised it. Although whether that's his first or last name doesn't seem to be something they need to know.  
  
He holds out a hand in Roque's direction, grin plastered across his face. The grin doesn't falter when his out stretched hand is ignored  
  
"Strong silent type, huh? I get that. I like that in a superior." Which. Well it sounds incredibly dirty when it's said like that. Then he swivels at Cougar, hand sticking out like a weapon, Cougar doesn't flinch, but he does pull back a little.  
  
"Ooookay, everyone's the strong silent type. I will come in very handy here with my amazingly miraculous conversation skills."  
  
There's only a couple of things you need to know about Jensen.  
  
He's an idiot. And a genius. He has no people skills. Except when he does. He is the most frustrating person Cougar has ever met. Within a week Cougar will be ready to kill anyone who looks cross eyed at him.  
  
  
  
It takes Cougar a couple of days to work out why he finds himself staring at the hacker. To be honest, most of those days were spent denying every thought his mind put forward.  
  
No, he did not care about the way Jensen smiled when he explained the extremely technical thing he was doing.  
  
No, he did not find anything endearing in the way Jensen seemed to read his mind and was always ready to swap out magazines the split second Cougar emptied.  
  
And he definitely didn't see anything attractive in the silhouette of the hacker coming off the gun range at dusk, laughing and still carrying around a laptop.  
  
This sudden _noticing_ of Jensen throws Cougar out.  
  
It's not that Cougar hasn't occasionally noticed men. It isn't like everytime Jensen walks into the room Cougar's internal sex drive switches from straight to gay-for-nerds. But it's not something he acts on, has never been something that he couldn't distract himself from. Well it hadn't been _before_.  
  
It just fucking hurts Cougar's head. He's not looking for any sort of fucking relationship. He's perfectly good with his brief encounters, ones that fade with the next morning's shower.  
  
He doesn't want anything permanent. Permanent meant it could be taken from you, used against you, became something you needed and therefore distracted you.  
  
He certainly doesn't want _anything_ with a fellow team mate. Especially not six feet of eye searingly bright clothes and many, many fast words.  
  
  
  
  
Cougar doesn't like how other people treat the hacker. That, he thinks, is what first sets off this thing. So really it's the fault of a bunch of other assholes that he gets so close to Jensen.  
  
  
  
  
Why the fuck they get sent to SERE with one man down and a new guy that they didn't really know yet is something that Cougar would really like to fucking know. Clay has that half frowning blank look on his face that means he's really fucking displeased with this as well.  
  
Especially when it becomes an accelerated course that skips the Survive, Evade bits and jumps straight into Resist.  
  
They stand in the cold - _so fucking cold_ \- clearing in their underwear, getting dressed down by people they've occasionally seen on base. Which Cougar can't help but think is weird. This isn't his first SERE, so he gets that there's only a certain pool of people to pull for these sorts of exercises. But it kind of ruins the illusion of capture if the person spraying spittle in your face is a guy you've watched run newbies through their paces.  
  
Cougar just lets the words wash over him. Whatever happens, he knows where these people live. Sometimes, in between casual violence and rants punctuated with spit, Cougar tries to think of the best place to place a sniper's nest near the base. There's a nice incline to the west that they occasionally have to run up which would probably do nicely.  
  
  
  
Most of SERE seems to be about demeaning you, meant to make a man feel small. This sort of shit grates on Roque and Clay, who are big in both body and spirit. Carlos Alvarez is the kitten that grew into a cougar, and Cougar's always been small. Being small, for him, has never meant weak. It means compact, swift and sneaky. Most of his fondest memories are from when he was smaller.  
  
  
  
Jensen handles the first screaming in his face very well. Cougar sneaks a look across at him. He has to admit, he's very fucking surprised that the hacker hasn't said a word since the guard started yelling at him.  
  
Cougar frowns. Jensen seems to be working something out in his head, his eyes drift back and forth, and every now and then his lips move slightly like he's reading something in his memory.  
  
The guard notices not long after Cougar and stops mid rant to shout, "Are you listening to me, maggot?!"  
  
It takes Jensen a moment to realise no one's yelling at him. He blinks and his eyes focus on the purpling face in front of him.  
  
"Huh? Sorry, I kind of zoned out there. Actually, do you think I could get a computer, just for a bit? There's this code that _I think_ is fucking genius. If I've got it right, I can skip out like three pages of shitty code. Fuck it's elegant." He doesn't seem to realise that the guard is going nuclear on him, and then says in a faux-british accent. "An elegant solution for a more civilised age."  
  
Jensen gets picked on a fair bit after that. He gets very vocal about their treatment and, well, about pretty much _everything_. Hell, he may have even started bitching about how in the northern hemisphere they never get to see the southern cross and doesn't that _suck_?  
  
It doesn't take long for someone to get the bright idea of shoving the hacker into the hotbox. Which is as bigger misnomer as Cougar's ever seen. Maybe in the middle of summer the small, _tiny_ metal shed might fit it's name better. But when they shove the lanky Jensen into a box too short for him to straighten up in, Cougar feels the first stirring of _something_ in his chest. It's a little annoying, because the next time he imagines seeing the guard's face in his crosshairs, his face moves on it's own accord into a smirk.  
  
From the beating that results, Cougar likes to imagine that it was a very scary smirk.  
  
  
After that he has to put extra effort into not displaying what he's thinking. It's effort that Cougar's not used to needing, and it pisses him off that it's some guy he kind of doesn't know that's triggered it. The best way to deal with this, Cougar decides, is to make sure Jensen's okay.  
  
Cougar's quiet and small, but most importantly he goes without notice. While Roque and Clay are getting their kidneys reacquainted with batons, Cougar tends to slip under everyone radar. Enough that even when he sneaks over to the hotbox - _cold_ box? - no one notices that he isn't where he should be.  
  
He can hear Jensen's voice, he's _still_ talking. Although from the way his voice is waning it's something he should consider stopping if he wants to be able to insult people when he gets out.  
  
Cougar taps the side gently. He's not an idiot, the higher-ups don't want them seriously damaged, so logic dictates they'd be monitoring Jensen to make sure he didn't do some inconvenient dying. The voice stutters for a bit, then continues softer. A tap comes back. Cougar tries to hear what he's actually saying, but the wind whisks the words away.  
  
He taps again, a distinct three tap. Jensen taps the three back, then starts tapping and humming a rough version of Ride Of The Valkyries. Cougar huffs a laugh and pats the tin.  
  
  
He feels better knowing that Jensen's okay. Maybe not good - Cougar's not stupid, he can put being trapped in a box with no light and the way Jensen's voice was ragged at the edges together and come up with a big Not Good - but he's hanging on.  
  
  
Jensen comes back a day and a half later - there's a murmur going around between the guards that the guy monitoring Jensen got sick of listening to him and had him let out early. He's a little shaky, spends alot of time stretching out his legs and enjoying the space their cell has.  
  
At night he sits in the corner, between Cougar and the wall, shivering and talking softly.  
  
"Honestly, how retarded are these guys? How can anyone look at me and go 'oh, there's a guy who never spent his entire schooling jammed into a locker'? Fucking jerkwads."  
  
The whole point of shoving Jensen in that place had been to shut him up but ever since he's come out he hasn't shut up. Like a switch that's been jammed on. But he does apologise to them all, apparently he's got a new found appreciation for how annoying he can be.  
  
SERE ends as abruptly as it starts. Cougar can't help but think he hasn't learnt anything new this time around. But when Jensen grins and playfully punches his shoulder on the drive back to base, Cougar finds himself playing along.  
  
  
  
  
  
In retrospect, Cougar knows that going on a glorified bar hop their first 'off' weekend was a bad idea. At the time Jensen tells him it's a _fucking awesome idea_ , and somewhere between all the quick smiles and faster words Cougar is convinced.  
  
The agreeing is still a bit hazy, one minute he's listening to Clay gush about how he was going to spend his weekend in his girl's arms and the next Roque and Jensen have him trapped between them. Each of them with really _really_ good reasons to why they need to show Jensen _every_ drinking establishment with in driving distance.  
  
So begins the bar crawl that changes Cougar's life.  
  
  
  
They get thrown out of two bars and are drinking in their fifth when Roque pussies out on them. Well, Jensen calls it pussying out. Cougar takes one look at the pretty brunette at the bar - staring at Roque with that I-am-hitting-that-tonight look on her face - and wishes Roque a good night.  
  
It's three _establishments_ later. That's what Jensen keeps slurring in his ear - _drinking establishments_ \- so Cougar has the word stuck in his head. It's nicer terminology than strip club or liquor store. And they decide to call it a night, or rather they're forced too. Jensen can only kind of stand and Cougar's somehow being used as a weight support.  
  
Even though Cougar's drunk enough that the act of putting one foot in front of the other in a repetitive manner is a feat of sheer brilliance, Jensen actually seems to be worse. Half hanging off Cougar, he seems to be skipping every third step and replacing it with a stumble. And a giggle.  
  
Cougar is not drunk enough to be entirely comfortable with a Spec Ops soldier giggling into his hair.  
  
They're cutting through the back alleys.  
  
 _It's a shortcut, trust me_.  
  
For some reason Cougar is letting the guy whose only just been stationed here, and can't walk without support, do the navigating. It's probably the same reason he's got the face of someone he barely knows jammed under his chin.  
  
"You smell nice." Wait. What the fuck?  
  
"What?" Cougar pulls back to look at the hacker's face. He's smiling sleepily, Cougar thinks it's the dopiest smile he has ever seen.  
  
"You smell nice." Jensen repeats. And runs his nose up the side of Cougar's neck, _sniffing_. The contact sends a shiver up his spine and, if he were a lesser man, Cougar might've groaned. As it is his mouth opens and he inhales deeply.  
  
Then shoves Jensen away, his back hits against the brick wall, hard, but the hacker just smiles a slow hungry smile.  
  
Later, when Cougar has spent months watching Jensen's back, after he has been stuck in small spaces with the hacker for hours, he'll know that smile as a placing-a-bet-on-the-long-shot smile. A hope and chance and nervous-but-hiding-it smile.  
  
But tonight, here, it looks like cockyness with wanton lust. If he was completely sober and fully in charge of his faculties he would walk away.  
  
But he's not.  
  
  
Later Jensen will call it many things - leaning over his shoulder, whispering in his ear - ravished me, got all up with the hot and heavy and the occasionally crude we rutted like horny teenagers in a dirty, dark alley. Cougar just refers to it as When He Attacked Jensen, because it's all flashes of teeth, skin and hands.  
  
He has no real memory of it.  
  
  
  
The next proper thought he has is _the sun is trying to kill me_. It's the only plausible excuse for it shining so fucking _brightly_ in his face.  
  
"Urgh."  
  
Cougar freezes. He can feel movement behind him, something soft brushing against his bare shoulders. Cougar opens his eyes as little as he possibly can. Okay. He's on his bunk, laying on his side. Huh, apparently they _did_ make it back to base. Cougar doesn't know how he got past gate security. But since there's no one yelling at him, he can presume he did it very stealthily. Cougar is a stealthy _hijo de puta_. Cougar's a little disgusted that security is so poor, he's half convinced he should go and tell them how bad they are at their jobs.  
  
"Argh." Is that someone's _shoulders_ against his? Why, oh why in the ever loving fuck is he lying back to back with someone on a bunk barely made for one?  
  
"I'm going to throw up. Aurgh. And then I'm going to kill the sun. Can you kill the sun? OH MY GOD, I am going to kill the sun." Cougar squeezes his eyes shut, as tightly as he possibly can.  
  
 _Oh god, what the fuck has he done?_  
  
The body behind him convulses and in one agile movement - a skill Cougar's pretty sure he doesn't possess right now - leaps over Cougar, barely jostling him, and makes a dash for the bathroom. Cougar keeps his eyes tightly closed but he can still _hear_.  
  
Hears vomiting, groaning, running water and then some more groaning as the door swings back open.  
  
"Huh." Cougar peeps. Jensen's standing over him, eyes mostly closed, one hand absently rubbing his stomach. And wearing only boxers. Very bright, very offensive to his eyes right now thankyou very much _boxers_.  
  
"That actually happened." Jensen speaks like he's still asleep. Cougar opens his eyes fully, ignoring the stabbing pains that the light gifts him with, and looks up at Jensen. He doesn't know how the guy is going to react.  
  
Stupid _idiota_. He doesn't really know anything about Jensen. Maybe he's going to freak and try to kill him. Maybe he'll try to blackmail Cougar with this. Or maybe he'll just tell a CO and get him shitcanned out of the army.  
  
"Huh." The hacker says again, tilting his head to the side, hair sticking up in a ridiculous manner.  
  
He closes his eyes and walks out of Cougar's line of sight. Moments later the bed dips alarmingly as Jensen drops himself back behind Cougar and mutters,  
  
"This is your one chance to kill me while my guard is down. Right now I think I'd like it."  
  
And then tries to steal Cougar's pillow.  
  
  
  
Roque walks in a couple of hours later with a grin and jump in his step that says 'I got laid all last night and then I woke up got laid some more'. Cougar's mostly alive by then. He's had a shower, stared at the toilet bowl, tried to decide if now was a good time to throw up, and found his hat on Jensen's bed. Surrounded by what looked like a gutted computer. Cougar has a vague recollection of Jensen pulling it apart last night, he's racked his brain but has yet to come up with a _why_.  
  
At the moment Cougar's feigning life in a precise manner, sitting on Pooch's bunk, cleaning his rifle. It doesn't need cleaning but the routine of it doesn't require any thinking, and Cougar needs that right now.  
  
"Good morning ladies!" Roque is entirely too cheerful this morning.  
  
"Oh fuck." The blanket that Jensen is hiding under moves with a cringe. "I am never drinking again."  
  
"The fuck did you do to your computer?" Roque asks, still booming loudly, enjoying the way the blanket flinched with each syllable.  
  
The annoying part of cleaning his rifle is that Cougar can do it blindfolded. So he can watch Jensen peek out at his own bed and whine,  
  
"Aww man, I forgot I did that too." Roque laughs and yanks the blanket off the hacker.  
  
"Come on Princess, let's see how well you shoot with a hangover."  
  
"I hate you," Jensen mumbles, attempting to curl into a ball.  
  
"That's what I'm here for." Roque answers, grabbing Jensen's arm and dragging him out.  
  
"Fine, I'm coming, but I'm not getting dressed."  
  
Cougar watches them leave from under the brim of his hat, when they've been out of sight for a good minute he allows himself a chuckle. A quiet laugh that's maybe got an hysterical edge to it, but it's amused nonetheless.  
  
  
He finds himself sitting in the bathroom, trying to think and not think at the same time. It's the only room that stays cool, quiet and empty.  
  
Until Jensen stands over him.  
  
"Dude, you've been avoiding me _all_ day."  
  
Cougar has and is currently still avoiding him.  
  
It should be weird. It should _feel_ weird. Cougar looks up at Jensen, his hands still remember how those hips felt under them. Jensen sits, shoving himself between the wall and Cougar, even though there wasn't really room.  
  
"Please stop looking at me I'm a grenade you've lost the pin to. We didn't fuck, I'm not a live grenade and I'm not going to try to braid your hair. Well actually, I might do that last one, but that's more of a shits and giggles thing."  
  
Jensen talks quickly, with an almost high pitched voice that Cougar's never heard before. But there's only one thing he hears.  
  
"We didn't fuck?"  
  
"Holy crap. I can't believe you were even more drunk than me. Fuck man, you carried me home! My god, your drunk walking skills must be inhuman! But no," Jensen sobers up. "No, we did not. Too much alcohol consumption is not good for the pants partying."  
  
Cougar breathes again. Fuck, he's forgotten in the last twenty hours what it's like to breath easily.  
  
"No fucking. But we were a lot like teenagers in heat, though. So that's a little embarrassing."  
  
  
  
Over the following years Jensen will call this the start of things - which isn't quite right, Cougar isn't completely sure that it didn't start the minute Jensen walked into their, _his_ life.


	2. Chapter 2

Their first official mission goes to shit pretty quickly. Cougar's stuck outside while Pooch, Jensen and Roque try and find some guy's panic room. Cougar would really like to know when they became thieves.  
  
"Ahh, yes, but US OF A Army sponsored thieves!" Jensen had laughed because _of course_ he found it funny. The hacker found fucking everything amusing.   
  
One minute everyone's shooting the shit over the comms, well as close as they get to it on a mission. The next there's the dull thud of gunfire, Roque's yelling and swearing and _nothing_ from the other two.  
  
"What the fuck is going on?!" Clay should get all kinds of shit from Jensen about the way his voice raises high at the end, but there's only silence covered in Roque swearing.  
  
Cougar can't see anything or anyone through the windows, _fuck_ he hates being so far away. He has fuck-all situational control out here. Then he sees Roque, pacing the room where the panic room is supposed to be.   
  
"Clay," Roque's rubbing his head and looking really fucking pissed. "It's fucking locked them in. I got no chance of opening this."  
  
None of them do. Except Jensen. Who's locked in there with a busted computer, Pooch and from what Roque says, a crazy guy with a gun. Roque wants to blow it ~~up~~ _open_.  
  
Clay goes into damage control. They have to presume that they're alive in there - anything else is a betrayal - so they decide to not blow it until they're forced too. Whether it's someone noticing three dodgy guys hanging around and calling the cops, or it's the third day without food or water.  
  
The next day and a half may be equally the most tense and boring time that Cougar has ever spent.   
  
And on the eve of the third day the door opens. Pooch storms out, locks himself into the car and won't talk to anyone. Jensen looks embarrassed when he comes out, carrying his broken laptop open in the crook of his arm. The screen's got a bullet hole neatly through it, but when Cougar gets close enough to hand Jensen a bottle of water, he can hear the low humming of the computer running.   
  
No one really knows what happened in there. To be honest, they're not asking because they're wise enough to know they probably don't want to know.  
  
The only thing Pooch says about it is when they all get into the car to finally go home. He turns to Jensen and says,  
  
"I hate you so fucking much right now."  
  
Jensen takes it in good grace, nods a little. Later, when Cougar asks what the fuck that meant, he just shrugs.  
  
"Dude, small spaces and me equal very annoying. We covered this in SERE remember?"   
  
Cougar does remember, but Jensen waves it off with a "Fuck it, let's get drunk."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
In Kuwait they spend their first couple of weeks bumming around a makeshift marine base _waiting_.  
  
Cougar did this dance in '91. It was tedious back then, and it's boring now. He doesn't see the point of a having a team like theirs, if they're just sitting around not being used.   
  
Jensen makes friends with marines much like he made friends with anyone else. Free porn and a hilarious kind of crazy.  
  
Cougar sometimes forgets he's so young. Unlike the rest of them, Jensen's not jaded enough to let the rivalry between marines and army get in the way of enjoying himself.  
  
"Army guys shoot the enemy, marines shoot army guys," Roque tells him, everytime he sees Jensen horsing around with a group of like minded marines.  
  
"And reservist shoot everybody!" The group - and let's face it, they are monkeys in camouflage - chorus back at Roque. Cougar has to smile a bit at the fact that everytime Roque tries to be a grumpy fucker, he gets shot down.   
  
He also chuckles when Jensen spends an entire morning getting yelled at by anyone with more than two bars on their shirt. And apparently they aren't to _ever_ use the term BFF. Ever ever.   
  
Cougar never gets to hear the full reason. He was smart enough to just go to sleep last night when Jensen started sulkily announcing " _I'm bored!_ " every five minutes.  
  
But he's pretty sure that the marines assembling and dissassembling their rifles while chanting a creed that starts with "This is my rifle. It is my BFF," and steadily gets _worse_ , probably has something to do with it.  
  
  
  
They spend their days driving patrols through the villages closest to the base. Today Pooch is bitching about his missing cookies. Cougar hopes they are really fucking spectacular biscuits because he's been listening to the driver for the last half hour and he hasn't changed the subject _once_.  
  
"Have you asked Smith?" Jensen pipes up, Cougar feels him shift beside him.  
  
"Smith?"   
  
"Yeah, Support staff guy. Looks fucking shady man." Cougar glances sideways at Jensen, he's pretty sure there isn't a Smith in Support.   
  
There's fucking cookie crumbs stuck to the side of the hacker's mouth, without thinking he swipes his thumb at them, brushing them away. Jensen looks shifty, his patented I've-been-caught-doing-stuff- _again_ look, then flashes a grin at him and stealthily puts a cookie in Cougar's hand.  
  
"Now we are co-conspirators," He says, mouth brushing against Cougar's ear. "You are complicit in this crime, with me."  
  
Cougar takes a nibble of the contraband cookie.  
  
It _is_ fucking delicious.  
  
  
  
Three days ago Roque and Jensen fought. Cougar doesn't know what started it, could've been anything. Living this close to each other and not having anything to do has them all annoyed and snapping at one another,  
  
All the sniper knows is that Roque and Jensen yelled at each other for a full hour. Each retort got more personal until Roque spat something venomous about how Jensen's sister probably deserved her abusive husband if she was even _remotely_ as annoying as Jensen.  
  
And that's too far. There's a line - in their line of work they walk paths cobwebbed with lines - and Roque's not only crossed it, he's pissed on it whilst skidding across it at a hundred miles an hour.  
  
Even Clay yells at him. Later and at length because there are some things that shouldn't be used as weapons amongst team mates.  
  
But Roque being overly fucking harsh is not that shocking. No, the most surprising thing is that Jensen doesn't retaliate. Doesn't say or do anything. Just goes a little red at the tips of his ears and walks away.  
  
Cougar's surprised by that, and more than a little alarmed. Jensen is kind of volatile. (although, Cougar admits, not close to Clay's ex's league) Cougar's seen the hacker get into shit slinging matches with _everyone_. About _anything_.   
  
Hell, the guy is infamous on a rainy UK base for getting into a fist fight with a much respected soldier after he pretended to threaten his computer. (Cougar actually thinks this incident was warranted, the guy had been a _pendejo_ all fucking week and Jensen had been rather tolerant for most of it)  
  
Jensen had never backed down for anything in all the time Cougar's known him. Even when he really probably should have. And yet here he is studiously ignoring Roque because the guy said something mean.   
  
Even Roque is disappointed. He growls at everyone. He's not going to say he's sorry, even if he might be, he's too annoyed by the fact that Jensen didn't fight back.  
  
  
  
Cougar and Pooch are playing cards when they find out that not only is their hacker clever and vindictive. He also has a hell of a pokerface.  
  
Well, to call what they're doing 'playing cards' is a being polite. What they're really doing is Pooch is giving all his money to Cougar who is getting bored of cheating.  
  
Roque left to get his laundry an hour ago, a job that typically takes less than five minutes. Cougar thinks it's safe to say he's either found one girl on base that he hasn't creeped out yet, or he's gone off to stage a one man war with Saddam by himself.  
  
Cougar can see either of them happening, hell maybe both. Simultaneously.   
  
Jensen was typing away at his computer until an hour ago when he started pacing around the tent. Every now and then he stops and tosses through their gear, muttering quietly to himself. Cougar would be suspicious but he's seen the hacker's antics before. It's usually some sort of distraction tactic to jog a bit of genius out of his skull for whatever he's playing with on the computer.  
  
And besides, Cougar is attempting to see if Pooch can lose when Cougar cheats in the driver's favour. It takes alot of patience and concentration to be this sneaky.  
  
"Hey Jensen, spot me some money," Pooch calls out after he proves that, yes, yes he really is terrible at cards. Nearly as bad Jensen - although Cougar sometimes suspects that Jensen doesn't actually care very much for the winning. He's more into the game play and the statistics. Roque and Cougar sit on top of the Do Not Play Cards With These Bastards list. Their games of who-cheats-better have been called both spectacular and terrifying.  
  
"Ahh, don't have any, sorry." Jensen answers absently.   
  
"What?" Pooch glances in Jensen's direction, I Call You On Your Bullshit written on his face. "At the beginning of the week you were bitching about having _nothing_ to spend your money on."  
  
"Yeah, I found something."  
  
"The fuck did you buy for three hundred dollars out here?"  
  
"I could tell you. But then Roque would have to kill you." Jensen is making little to no sense, but still bustling around the tent like a man possessed. "Where the fuck is it?! I know there's _at least_ one more."  
  
"What the fuck are you doing?"   
  
For a moment Cougar thinks Pooch is talking to him, exchanging the eight in his hand for the queen up his sleeve. But it's Jensen that looks guiltily at them.  
  
"Aah, you know how sometimes you think of something completely genius? And when it's too late to change it, you suddenly realise you might've been mistaken about the whole genius thing?"  
  
"Jensen, what did you do?" Pooch has actually put his cards, face up, down on the table, a suspicious but amused grin on his face.  
  
"Oh hey, I found a twenty! You want it?"  
  
"Is it yours?"  
  
"Could be?"  
  
"Sure, why not."  
  
"You want me to hand it directly to Cougar? Or is it more fun if you get to do it?"  
  
"Ha-freaking-ha, don't change the subject. What did you do?"  
  
"Well. Maybe I shouldn't tell you. Deniability might save you." The hacker straightens from looking under his bunk, then grins. "Besides, it'll ruin the joke if I tell you beforehand."  
  
"So what you're telling us is that it's your fault Roque hasn't come back yet."  
  
"I think so. Unless he's gone Army of One on Saddam. Which, I gotta say, right now _I hope so_. I can't find this fucking knife. I AM GOING TO DIE BECAUSE I CAN'T FIND A FUCKING KNIFE!"  
  
Cougar turns to look at Jensen over his shoulder. He's got most of Roque's knives tucked into his belt and is standing in the middle of the tent running fingers through his hair, trying to remember all the places he's seen Roque pull knives from.  
  
Cougar pulls the last one, the one Roque keeps under the card table, and taps against the table top. He doesn't what the hacker has done - honestly it could be _anything_ and Cougar has long since given up even speculating on such things. But it does seems prudent to disarm Roque.  
  
"Thanks Cougs, now I should just have the one, or two, that he carries to deal with." Jensen takes it from him, grinning lopsidedly as he adds it to his collection. "Okay! Death bed confessional time! Pooch. I once had a dream about Jolene. Just once! And it was weird! But our kids were geeky and beautiful, ack!" He ducks the boot that Pooch throws at him, and waves his arms in front of his face in what Jensen no doubt thinks is a defensive manner. "Hey! Death bed confessional! Don't be killing the dying man!"  
  
Pooch laughs and throws the other boot.  
  
"Hah! Okay, you got that out of your system? Cougar. I'm sorry for all the times I said I could look after myself. I was _clearly_ lying. I have abso-fucking-lutely _no_ self preservation skills, what so ever."  
  
  
  
It's kind of anticlimactic when Roque finally comes back, carrying his laundry.  
  
Only it's not, because on closer look, his fatigues seem to have been washed with something red.   
  
Or purposely dyed a light shade of pink.   
  
And the chevrons have been replaced with diamantes in the same shapes.   
  
Cougar's sharp eyes pick out ' _Princess Roque_ ' on the name tag before Roque throws the offending items at Jensen. And reaches for the knife he keeps near the tent's entrance.  
  
"Now, Roque, let's be civil! And forgiving!" Jensen moves quick, bee-lining for the card table where Pooch is losing his shit with laughter. "Forgiveness is good!"  
  
Roque's face darkens when doesn't find the knife he's looking for, and he growls when he notices that Jensen's wearing them around his waist like a knife skirt.  
  
"I am going to cut your fucking head off." Cougar admires the calm voice Roque uses. Threats are always more effective when you sound calm about the violence you plan to inflict.   
  
"Okay, let's not do that!" Jensen's voice, on the other hand, is getting higher at each word. "I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for you to _not_ do that. Can't think of any right now.. Aaah, Cougar protect me!"  
  
Somehow Jensen manages to pull Cougar out of his seat; gripping his shoulders and placing him between Roque and Jensen.   
  
"Dude, I only did it because you were really mean about my sister!" Jensen shouts, peeking out over Cougar's shoulder, his fingers tightening ready to shift Cougar if Roque lunges at him. "If she were here it would've been a lot worse!"  
  
Cougar has never met Jensen's fabled sister but he's a little wary of her. If even half the shit that he's heard about her is true she is a very scary person who makes Jensen look like a quiet, sane, well-rounded person.  
  
They seem to have reached a stalemate between Roque and Jensen. Cougar briefly glances back at Pooch, hoping to maybe get a little help from the driver. But he's getting a closer look at Jensen's handy work and Cougar's not sure he's going to stop laughing this decade.  
  
No one dies. Mostly only because Jensen keeps Cougar between him and Roque. But also because eventually Roque has to admit that it was pretty fucking good revenge.   
  
  
  
They come under fire driving through a crowded market. When the dust clears - the bullets have mostly stopped snapping through the air and the attackers are either dead or have melted away to fight another day - Cougar finds himself jogging from vehicle to vehicle trying to find a certain blonde.  
  
He fucking hates being separated from his team, he hates the uncertainty and the god awful _wait_ to find out what's happened.  
  
In the end it's Pooch who finds him.  
  
"Hey Cougs!" He calls out, raising a hand and not looking very happy. The driver is only four vehicles down, but it takes Cougar for-fucking-ever to get past the next three. People keep stopping him to do the back slapping and ego stroking _thing_ that Cougar has no time for, now or any other time.  
  
He finally gets past them all, okay he maybe growls and everyone leaves him the fuck alone.  
  
Pooch is squatting in the sand next to Jensen, a hand on his knee. Cougar feels a twinge of jealousy at that, but he squashes it down because it's _Pooch_ and there's only one person he trusts more than him. Besides, when Cougar gets close, Pooch stands up and gives the two of them space.  
  
Pooch is good like that, knows when to hang around and when to disappear.  
  
Jensen's sitting slumped against the humvee's wheel well. He's got a piece of paper that he's worrying between his fingers, staring at it like the image is fading and he only has this moment to memorise it.  
  
"Hey," Cougar says, tapping his foot against Jensen's instep. He's not usually the one initiating the conversations, but then usually he would've heard the hacker before seeing him. Usually Jensen would be looking at him, without Cougar ever saying anything.   
  
Cougar stands over Jensen for a full minute before the hacker looks up. When he does, _madre de dios_ , he looks terrible. Smudges of dirt and sand stick in the lines of his face and he doesn't even attempt to smile. Just looks at Cougar with sad heavy eyes and an exhalation of breath that could almost be a sigh.  
  
If Cougar didn't know better - didn't know that Jensen buried his dark emotions like he was afraid to let anyone see him look anything but sunny - maybe then Cougar could pass this off as a bad day in the 'office'.  
  
"Hey," he says again, crouching down next to Jensen.   
  
The hacker looks out at the market place and Cougar follows his gaze. Bodies are scattered in the now abandoned place.   
  
Shemagh covered faces, AK's and shell casings litter the sand.   
  
Every now and then a civilian face stares unseeing amongst the dead. Cougar doesn't know whose shots brought them down, perhaps no one ever will. He shuts down any feelings that try to bubble up and tells himself that it doesn't matter. That it's nothing.  
  
There's one body in particular that Jensen seems to be staring at with those sad eyes. A gust of wind picks up and blows the cotton from it's face and to Cougar it feels like a gut punch.  
  
It's just a kid.  
  
Jensen's ducked his head again, staring at the paper in his hands - it's a photo Cougar realises. He didn't know Jensen carried a photo.  
  
He twists a little, tries to get a good look at it, fuck he's curious. Jensen gets mildly attached to computer chips and cotton candy. Cougar hasn't seen him handle anything so reverently since Command gave him a new laptop. (and even that he'd had pulled apart within half an hour.)  
  
It's a woman and kid.   
  
Cougar frowns.  
  
A kid with Jensen's brilliant blue eyes.  
  
A ball of cold horror forms in Cougar's stomach and it's only the fact that if he jolts back he'll fall on his ass that stops him from pulling back.   
  
"He had a gun." Jensen says, scrubbing his free hand through his hair and not noticing Cougar's internal freakout. "And Pooch was reloading. And I. I. I just didn't think. Just acted. _Heh_."   
  
For a moment Cougar thinks Jensen's going to cry, he keeps rubbing his eyes and wiping his palm across his mouth like there's a horrible taste he has to get rid of.  
  
"I thought I was here to make the world safer for little girls. I just didn't realise that meant shooting little boys." Jensen's voice turns sharp at the end, sharp and bitter.  
  
Cougar pushes down thoughts of Jensen having a kid and a smiling, pretty, _happy_ wife, now is not the time for having a fucking sob about how your boyfriend has a real family. ( _Of course_ Jensen has a proper family.)  
  
"Fuck man, I need to be jamming to The _fucking_ Animals now," Jensen's voice has an almost manic edge to it, like he's trying to force himself to sound like he normally does. " _Goddamn it_ this war doesn't even have a decent soundtrack."   
  
He buries his head in his hands and goes silent.  
  
Cougar doesn't know what to say to make this better for Jensen, there's not a lot you can say that's not going to sound like bullshit. Fuck, anything he says is going to be bullshit.   
  
It's not okay, he won't get over it, this shit is going to stick with you until you fucking die.  
  
So he just crouches beside him, rifle resting easily on his knees and keeps everyone away until Jensen's ready to tuck away his photo and face the world.  
  
  
  
  
  
It's in Kuwait that Jensen first tells Cougar he loves him. In typical Jensen style it's surreal, a conversational overload and completely out of the blue.  
  
It's another day of them getting shot at, but this time there aren't civilians hiding and running for their lives. There's just street after street of random AK fire and everyone who isn't apart of this is staying indoors.  
  
Jensen's staring down the sights of his M4, finger quivering; waiting to fire.  
  
"At first I thought you were pissed because of yesterday. And the kid."   
  
He fires when sees movement above him, bits of brick shatter around him to let him know he hasn't quite got the guy yet. He ducks back behind his pillar, listening intently to the time spacings between shots.  
  
"But then, I remembered you were so _nice_ to me yesterday. Until I showed you the photo. Then I realised you are a big fucking idiot."  
  
He pauses and presses his comm's button,  
  
"Colonel, we're being held up about a block from your position,"  
  
and resumes firing across the courtyard.  
  
"So you see a photo of a chick and a baby. And you spazz at me. Come on guy. Just pop up, mother earth's sweet final embrace is calling you."   
  
Another AK sounds off, lower, bullets thump into the wall around him.   
  
"I can't believe you think my sister is my fucking secret wife!" He yells over the sound, and returns fire. "Reloading!"   
  
Cougar covers, maybe takes out the guy on the bottom level.   
  
"I don't show people the photo because it's cliche and stupid. Jesus, Cougs, even you knew I had a sister!  
  
"I'm sorry," Cougar says barely heard over the gunfire. Jensen slams the magazine in and racks up his new bullets.  
  
"Fuck man, just trust me a little." Jensen ducks back behind his pillar as shots hit around the edges, and looks at Cougar. Really looks at him.   
  
"Fuck. Cougar, I like you. More than I've ever liked anyone else. Fuck it, I'm going to say it. I love you." Cougar freezes, Jensen ignores it and pops out to fire a couple of shots. Cougar was expecting a lot of things - one has to when conversing with Jensen - but he didn't expect that. They haven't really talked about the thing the two of them have. Never put words to it.  
  
"I don't care that it's too fucking soon, or whatever fucking ' _oh we're too manly_ ' reason I'm supposed to use. You can call me a big fucking girl all you like. I fucking love you. You know I don't even ogle at people anymore? I can't believe I don't ogle anymore."   
  
He fires another series of shots at the balcony across the courtyard. Pauses.  
  
"That little bastard is stuck in there real good, huh? Okay, I'll draw him out. You got good line of fire?"  
  
Cougar grunts, yes he does.  
  
"Okay, this is gonna suck. Hey!"  
  
Cougar hears the 'hey', looks at him and Jensen flashes him a brilliant smile. The kind that says I'm about to do something crazy, and isn't that _awesome_? But it's also says I love you and I trust you, and _goddamn_ Cougar can't help but smile back. (And line his rifle up.)  
  
Jensen's off running across the open space, the AK's shots kick up stone and debris as they land around Jensen's feet.   
  
Cougar spots the man in his scope, firing wildly at Jensen. Cougar exhales slowly and squeezes the trigger. He doesn't stop to watch the man's head snap back, or his body slump out of view. He's too busy looking out through the dust, looking for Jensen leaning against the opposite wall, panting and holding a fist up to signal he's good.   
  
Cougar's not good with words, he can't bend and master them into things that he means. He doesn't know if he has those three words in him, but looking at Jensen jogging back to his position, Cougar wonders if maybe Jensen doesn't need to hear them from him. Maybe he gets that Cougar says I love you with hot bullets and cooling blood.  
  
"You good?" Jensen asks as he reaches Cougar, like he didn't just profess love and rush into gunfire.  
  
Cougar nods and Jensen smiles small and starts walking on point.   
  
The sniper's hand reaches out, grabbing the back of Jensen's webbing and pulling him back to him.  
  
Cougar isn't comfortable with words. Doesn't like how they get garbled and misinterpreted. So he presses his fist against Jensen's heart. He can't feel its beat through the layers of webbing and camo, but he doesn't have to. He knows its rhythm like he knows Jensen likes ice-cream with pink sherbet. Knows it like he knows the only thing worse than a quiet Jensen is one babbling on the edge of hysteria. Knows it like he's spent years just listening to every change in it's pace.  
  
"I trust you." They aren't the three words he means, but Jensen grins like it's Christmas. Like Cougar just bought him roses and sang I love you from the top of the Eiffel tower.  
  
  
  
Later that night they sit on the very edge of the camp on a man-made berm. They sit quietly, for once just enjoying the sound of their breathing, the far off sounds from the base and the way their ears ring in the silence. When Jensen knocks his knee against Cougar's, somehow it feels as intimate as a kiss and caress.  
  
"I miss Mexico." Cougar says softly, sighing and leaning back into the sand.   
  
Jensen copies the move and flops down beside him.  
  
"I miss Mexico too." He says, rubbing the back of his head in the sand.   
  
"You've never been to Mexico." Cougar says, closing his eyes.  
  
"You don't know that." Jensen says with a soft laugh that says I Am Lying. He must realise he's given himself away because a heartbeat later he follows with, "Okay, fine I'm lying a little bit."  
  
"You should come." For a moment Cougar isn't sure if he actually wants Jensen to come with him, or if he's just being polite.   
  
He watches the hacker inhale deeply, eyes closing, head pushed back, and realises yes he does want to show Mexico to Jensen. Wants to take him to every part of Latin America. Wants him to see the bits they miss when they're sent to a warzone or slogging it around a jungle after some wannabe terrorist druglord.   
  
"I'd like that."  
  
Jensen smile curves upwards, and his hand reaches out, taps once, twice, three times against Cougar's side.


	3. Chapter 3

Cougar meets Jaqueline Jensen in the spring. They've just come back from their stint in Kuwait (and its surrounding nations) and Jensen had put his foot down. Apparently he wouldn't be satisfied until Cougar had touched his sister - his words - and worked out that Jensen wouldn't lie about shit like that. And _then_ they could go to Mexico and see whatever it is that makes Cougar miss it so damned much.  
  
That, Cougar was okay with. Maybe a little wary, 'hey let's meet my family' always sounds like a trap, even when it isn't. But mostly okay. What he's not okay with is being alone in a stranger's apartment.  
  
Jensen's sister isn't home, Jensen is a few doors down, seeing if his niece is being babysat and Cougar is standing in an unfamiliar kitchen trying very hard not to bolt for the airport.  
  
  
It's a fucking _home_. That's what has Cougar on edge. The Losers, they don't have homes. Jensen has a tiny ratty-ass apartment off base which he uses to hold his personal electronic equipment. And nothing else.  
  
Clay has an off base apartment which he basically uses to get laid. It has a fridge with beer and a cupboard with out of date cereal.  
  
Cougar has a hired storage space that's mostly empty. It's right next to Roque's. All of their earthly possessions kept behind a flimsy roller door.  
  
Pooch was the only one of them with even the vaguest semblance of a home, a small house that had touches of Jolene in it. Of course they now had a bigger home. A place the Losers were welcome but Cougar never felt comfortable there.  
  
  
The fridge has tiny blue hand prints pressed onto the smooth white and a copy of the same photo that Jensen carries. It seems to be the only photo on display in the whole house. Cougar doesn't know why, but he likes that Jensen's presence isn't pasted all over the place.  
  
He's staring at the fridge when the front door opens and a female voice calls out. A few moments later a dancing woman dances into the kitchen. She wears a pantsuit, a dark purple dress shirt and is currently dancing and singing,  
  
"I gotta contract - buh - dum - duh - I am all that is _totally_ awesome!"  
  
Midway, arms in the air, she freezes and her head snaps up to look at Cougar.  
  
"You are not my neighbour," Her voice is suspicious, but not panicked. "or my daughter."  
  
Cougar hasn't felt so out of place since he started grade school. Where the other children _knew_ he wasn't like them. Where his S's and most of his words weren't _right_ – because they had only spoke spanish at home. Where he learnt to be slow, steady and precise. Where he learnt to only give as much was necessary. He wonders, in an offhand way, what the uncertainty will teach him this time.  
  
  
She keeps the counter between them, hand resting _lightly_ on the handle of the frying pan in a way that could almost be by accident.  
  
"Either my brother's here a day early, or you are a very shy thief."  
  
"Hey Cougs! Where'd you get to?"

_Oh thank god._

  
Jensen comes in with a four year old doing an octopus impression on his hip. Oddly enough it doesn't even look a little ridiculous.  
  
  
When Cougar is cleared of being a maybe-thief, she - _Jacks_ \- hugs him and welcomes him to her home. And scolds _Jake_ for leaving him alone in the house. Later Cougar sees her pull Jensen aside.  
  
"Dammit Jake what the _frick_ were you thinking?" She's a good five inches shorter than Jensen, but still manages to look like a mother looking down at a naughty child.  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about." Jensen cleans his glasses in the studied way he does when he wants to avoid looking at the person talking to him.  
  
" _Cougar_?" Cougar winces at the way she says his name. "A guy on your _own_ fucking team? Why are you being so stupid? You are a fucking moron who is going to get fucking hurt."  
  
"Hey! Language!"  
  
She gives Jensen a look that is worse than any cuss word.  
  
"Look. It's okay. Jesus, just," Cougar watches the way Jensen pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing, and wants to leave - this has to be the worst thing he has ever done. "I like him. He seems to like me. We work _fine_ together."  
  
Jensen smiles, a smile that softens his whole face. "We work together really fucking well."  
  
Jacks quietens for a moment, watching her brother and then nods.  
  
"Oh Jake, why can't you stay for longer? What's Mexico got what I don't, huh?"  
  
Jensen grins, the same cheeky grin that he uses when he's baiting Roque or doing something spectacularly juvenile.  
  
"The opportunity to say Me - _xi_ \- co. Alot. _And_ cervezas and senoritas."  
  
"Do you even know what cervesas are?"  
  
"No. Maybe. Are they tasty? I bet they're tasty."  
  
"Jake, you're an idiot."  
  
  
  
It takes some getting used to, hearing Jensen being called Jake. Cougar finds himself rolling the name around his mouth but can't make himself use it.  
  
Jake is a guy who laughs when the little girl on his shoulders dribbles pink ice cream into his hair. A guy who is _domestic_ and quiet at night. He's someone that Cougar almost doesn't know.  
  
The Jensen Cougar knows is a guy who hacks secure military records and replaces them with nonsensical information (It's the reason that six months in '94 on Cougar's file - previously marked as 'training' - is now renamed as 'Sith related shenanigans'). A guy with sharp smiles, bloody teeth, a young face and old eyes.  
  
That Jensen is Cougar's.  
  
  
  
They sleep in the same bedroom but don't fuck. It's too weird and wrong so instead they spend the dark hours backs pressed together. Sometimes Cougar wakes to Jensen curled up behind him, nose pressing against the back of his neck.  
  
Cougar finds himself looking at Jacks a little too closely. She's pretty in a cute sort of way. Her real beauty comes out when she smiles at her little girl, or when she makes coffee in the morning, a hand ruffling through Jensen's hair in a fond way. When she's not dancing in a suit, she tends to attire herself in boxers and a tank top while she's working - some sort of computer designing _thing_ that Cougar doesn't really understand but the Jensen siblings talk about for _hours_ using words that they maybe make up.  
  
And she's Jensen's _twin_. The fact that Jensen's never mentioned that amuses Jacks no end.  
  
"You never told them?"  
  
"I'm sorry," Jensen rolls his eyes. "It's kind of hard to slip into the conversation. Doesn't really fit in between 'oh I've hacked the satellites - by the way, I have a twin sister'. I'm not hiding it, it's not like it's top fucking secret."  
  
  
  
He doesn't mean to but he does, for a very small moment, wish he'd met Jensen's sister first. It's not that he actually thinks it would make a great reality - Cougar isn't sure he's made for the whole white picket fence _thing_ \- but it's a nice pipe dream.  
  
Late in the night, their last night here before they leave for Mexico, Jensen leans back on the headboard as Cougar stares at the ceiling.  
  
"I love you man, but you even think of going near my sister with your cock and I'll kill you. I will kill you and make it look like you did it to yourself."  
  
He says it quietly, in an almost sleepy voice, and Cougar feels something very close to fear. Cougar's fairly sure that Jensen couldn't kill him - Cougar figures Jensen's chances at about twenty five percent - but if he did manage to kill Cougar, he has no doubt the hacker would get away with the murder.  
  
He doesn't say anything in reply, there really isn't anything to say. Besides Jensen's already rolled onto his side and gone to sleep, so obviously he's not expecting a reply either. Not that he needed the warning, despite the dream of a perfect _normal_ life that Cougar thinks about sometimes. That sort of thing isn't really what Cougar _needs_. No white picket fence could possibly replace the hands that keep him from slipping, or the quiet with slowing heartbeats - coming down from adrenaline bursts - just slumped against each other; enjoying the _I am alive_ moment.  
  
  
  
In Mexico they sleep in the shade of the day - just out of the sun. At night they drink and flirt with the pretty girls that crowd the bar. Jensen uses his terrible spanish on the natives and gets mixed results. Three numbers scribbled on his arm (at least one of them with the wrong number of digits), a red handprint on his cheek, a lipstick smeared kiss over the slap mark and a black eye from a mountain of a man who objected to the way Jensen was mutilating his language. The way Jensen started insulting him in perfect spanish didn't endear him much either.  
  
The sun here is like no other place on earth. Cougar closes his eyes and just breathes - it's been too long since they've gotten leave, let alone an entire month of it. Cougar feels the ache for this place dull as he relaxes in the sun.  
  
"Oh my god, I am never leaving." Jensen. Cougar doesn't know why Jensen being here doesn't grate. Doesn't know why sharing this with him feels so fucking right.  
  
A week later they're called back up. Early. Cougar really hasn't had time to show Jensen anything that he had maybe planned to. But when he looks at the hacker, laughing and ~~explaining~~ lying about his black eye to Pooch, Cougar thinks that maybe he had managed show a little of Mexico to him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final warning for attempted noncon

Georgia is not Cougar's favourite country. It's not even in his top ten.  
  
This is about to change. Georgia is about to shoot itself straight to the top of Cougar's I Will Die Before I Go Back list.  
  
 _They've been sold out._ That's what Jensen's been muttering under his breath as he packs up his gear. It's taking more time than they have but leaving it all here isn't an option.   
  
_the fucking company_  
  
If Cougar was a normal person he'd be crawling the walls with anxiety but he's not, instead he's tapping the door frame impatiently. He had tried to help the hacker, but in truth, other than carrying things out or breaking stuff, Cougar can't do what needs to be done to the equipment.  
  
Each tick of Cougar's watch sounds like a countdown. Jensen obviously feels the same way because he breathes out a long _fuuuuck_ and thrusts a computer into Cougar's hands.   
  
"Just fucking destroy it, then start at that end of the bed and just fucking kill it all." He runs a hand through his hair and his movements have started to get more manic. He knows time is running out, knows that any time now the door is going to be busted in and they're going to be fucked.   
  
Cougar takes pleasure is destroying the delicate pieces of equipment. He's wanted to do this everytime Jensen has been more interested in what's on screen than what's happening in the real world. The plastic shell shatters easily and he shoves his boot through the LCD screen - which splinters in a really satisfying way.  
  
"Hey, come on man! Don't enjoy yourself so much." Jensen sounds a little hurt, but his face is downright gleeful as he smashes the butt of his M4 into the brain of his machine.   
  
  
They very nearly get away.   
  
  
"I am never working for the Sith again." Jensen declares as they're roughly manhandled into the back of a police van, hands shackled behind their backs. The nearest police officer swings his baton out without warning and Jensen spends the ride to whatever hell hole they're heading towards trying very hard not to choke on the blood that runs from his nose.  
  
  
  
Georgia is not Cougar's favourite country. It's cold. The sun is weak and the cold air is knife sharp. Getting thrown into maximum security prison is also souring his opinion somewhat. The one shining light is that they're thrown into the same cell. The sunless, tiny concrete square is a little easier to bear when you had someone to share it with.   
  
The bruises around Jensen's eyes and nose yellow. They collect new ones and then replace those with better ones. Time becomes something that other people worry about. The days are filled with artificial light and 'interrogations'. Night with impenetrable darkness and taking turns keeping watch.  
  
  
  
Cougar's hat is currently being worn by a short heavy man sporting a spectacular moustache. Honestly it's a moustache that Saddam would die of jealousy over - Hitler would probably invade a country over it.  
  
He must be a government lackey of some sort, they don't see him that often. The first time he comes, they've been stuck in their cell for a week. He wears Cougar's hat and stares at them with cold eyes.   
  
When he leaves Jensen laughs. And laughs. _And laughs_.  
  
"Oh fuck, oh man, that is the finest moustache I have ever seen! I'm sorry Cougs, but I'm fucking defecting. I just can't bear to not be on the same side as that _sweet_ moustache."  
  
The next time he comes, seemingly to just stare at them, Cougar thinks of all the ways he could kill him without damaging his hat.   
  
And he really _really_ wants to go through with at least half of them. But he's not selfish enough to get them both killed over his hat.  
  
  
  
"What do you think the prison term for being dodgy is?" Jensen asks, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Cougar. "I know they didn't get anything off our stuff. And we don't technically exist. So we haven't _technically_ done anything illegal."   
  
  
  
Like all good routines it doesn't take much for theirs to get fucked up. It's close to lights off, Jensen's being led back from his question time. Cougar doesn't know what sets it off, but the back of Jensen's head hits the bars of their cell door with a sickening crack. He stumbles and is pushed to the ground by a grabby handed guard. Cougar growls, he remembers that, gnashing teeth as he strains through the bars. Just fucking hoping to touch, grab, kill one of the two guards. He doesn't think about what they're trying to do, but the one watching stumbles back. There's a stream of blood squirting out from somewhere in the mess of bodies. It looks like arterial spray Cougar absently thinks as the stumbling guard comes into his range and he scrabbles, grabs and gets a good grip around his neck.   
  
The snap is more of a grinding of bones, a low sound you felt more than heard. Cougar shoves the body away as Jensen, pale, _madre dulce maria_ so pale, crawls over. He presses his forehead against the bars and curls his hands around them. Cougar moves to him, the hacker is trembling and panting but stills when Cougar rests his forehead against Jensen's. He puts his hands over the hacker's and holds them tight enough to hurt. Cougar hopes the slight pain brings him back down, gives him something to latch onto.   
  
More guards are not far away. Jensen doesn't say anything as they pull him away from the bars, doesn't say anything as they hit and yell at him. Just curls into a ball and closes his eyes to everything. He doesn't say a fucking thing the whole time and it fucking _kills_ Cougar.   
  
  
  
Cougar is currently not thinking. He isn't thinking about fingertips drawing blood scrabbling on hard concrete. He isn't thinking about the noises _people_ make when they're fighting for their lives. He isn't thinking about how easily thin metal slides into carotid arteries. He isn't thinking about the blood, blood that's coagulating in the hall. He definitely isn't thinking of the way Jensen had leant against their bars - Cougar on one side; him on the other - struggling to breath through the panic.  
  
It's been sixteen hour since he's seen Jensen. Sixteen long hours. Some Cougar spent getting interrogated, there's two dead guards and someone who's not a guard has to pay for that. Mostly, though, he's been in their cell. Waiting for the other occupant to be brought back.  
  
Cougar can't find any comfort in the fact that the only reason they haven't been been severely maimed or killed is that they're still awaiting trial. It's not a fucking guarantee. They've spent the last month or so walking a fine fucking line. Trying to be intimidating enough to be left alone, but harmless enough that no one felt the need to take them down. Cougar wonders if, now, they'll even bother waiting for the trial. Maybe the two of them will be 'killed in a riot', 'suicide' or simply just 'disappear'.   
  
  
  
He aches all-fucking-over and some how the cold of the cell is seeping under his skin. He hits his head against the cell wall, the pain clears his head for a moment and he realises that something is very fucking wrong. It's probably been creeping up on him for a couple of days now, he thinks that maybe Jensen had been noticing, but he can't ask him because he isn't _here_.   
  
His hands are shaking. His hands have _never_ so much as trembled. He's as fucking solid as they come, Cougar curls them into fists and thumps them _hard_ against the floor. It hurts. Hurts like shards of glass under the skin, hurts way more than it should. He looks at them again, they still shake. He studies them a little closer and realises that it's not just his hands, his whole body is shaking.   
  
Something is seriously wrong, his stomach feels like it's been stabbed with something hot and burning. Maybe, he thinks, the interrogation that he spent getting the shit kicked out of him has fucked something up in there. Every bit of Cougar's body shakes with tremors that he can't control, his movements are sluggish and weak. He aches and burns but at the same time is, _oh god_ , so _cold_.  
  
He hits his head against the wall again - it clears again for a blessed moment - maybe he's going to die in this cement square, locked away from the sun. He feels a little sad about that and wonders if he'll get to see the sun again, before. The sun here is probably a weak substitute for the one in the place that feels like home.  
  
  
  
The biggest indicator of how fucking wrong Cougar feels comes when Jensen finally gets dropped into their cell. The hacker barely manages to get his arms out to keep his face from slamming into the floor. Jensen barks out a weak sound that sounds more cough than laugh and Cougar can't get up.   
  
He wants to, god he fucking wants to, but every movement makes his body spasm into a tighter ball.  
  
"Hey Cougs," Jensen's voice scratches out as he slowly makes his way to where Cougar is curling around himself and wishing for death.  
  
Cougar feels more than sees the hacker crawl up beside him.  
  
"You okay?"   
  
He can hear Jensen's hands feeling their way towards Cougar.  
  
"Cougs?"  
  
The hands reach him, they're cold and press a little harder than necessary.  
  
"Fuck you're hot. Seriously man, if you've gotten a goddamn fever _without me_ I'm going to be so jealous."  
  
He slips in and out of reality after that. The guards leave him alone, maybe they're hoping he'll die.  
  
Sometimes the toe of a boot nudges him.   
  
Sometime he can vaguely hear Jensen shouting through the bars, but he can't understand the words.  
  
Sometimes Jensen bumps him as they drag the hacker from the cell.   
  
There's a moment when Jensen's voice filters into his brain _..take him to a hospital, fix him up. I swear, I'll. I'll behave.."_ and Cougar wants to scream and shout and kill everything but he can't move. Can't even curl up anymore. There's more talking, but Cougar blacks out into the unforgiving darkness.  
  
  
  
When he wakes up he's warm. The contrast has him scrabbling up and _away_ from everything.   
  
"Steady, easy! Easy, soldier." A man's voice says, low and, more importantly, calming.   
  
It takes a moment to work out that the man in front of him is Colonel Clay and it takes longer than Cougar likes to realise he is on a plane.  
  
He steadies his breathing and takes stock of what he knows. He is on a plane. With the Colonel. There's a dull pain in his stomach and - _fuck_ \- where the fuck is Jensen?  
  
Clay can obviously read Cougar's searching eyes because he points a thumb towards the cockpit.  
  
"Annoying the fuck out of the pilots. He'll be back down here any time now."  
  
True to the Colonel's words Jensen comes back nearly before the words were out of his mouth. He looks terrible, Cougar thinks, wearing thick framed glasses that nearly cover the dark circles around his eyes. The fatigues they've given him look too big and hang off him at sharp angles, like there's nothing under them to hold their shape.   
  
The sight of him loosens something in Cougar's chest, something that he didn't realise was tight until it came undone.  
  
Jensen smiles widely when he sees Cougar awake and all but runs to his bedside.  
  
"Dude, your appendix has the worst timing _ever_." When he laughs it's a brittle sound, like shattered glass falling on metal.   
  
Cougar spends most of the plane ride home sleeping. Now he's woken once, Jensen doesn't seem to want to leave. He sits unnaturally still on the foot of the makeshift bed. At first Cougar thinks he's resting but on a closer look, the next time he surfaces  from unconsciousness, his jaw is clenched and he stares at his knees like he's looking at something he doesn't like. His profile confuses Cougar every time he wakes up, wearing those thick rimmed glasses. They're the type the armed forces were typically expected to wear. The type that Jensen has _never_ worn by choice. Seeing him wear them now pisses Cougar off.  
  
  
  
It's almost like a homecoming, landing in America. As the plane slowly taxis to a halt Jensen's head dips against Cougar's shoulder and he breathes a tired sigh.   
  
Roque and Pooch come to see them, relief filling in the worry lines that they've grown since Cougar saw them last. They settle for patting Cougar's shoulders or arms - mostly from fear of hurting anything they can't see - but Pooch does manage to get Jensen in what can best be described as a bear hug.   
  
There's something almost tender in the way the driver squashes Jensen against him.  
  
"Aaaack! I'm good! I'm fine! Aaack! You're killing me!" Jensen squirms and eventually gives, squeezing back with long thin arms.  
  
As they wheel Cougar away - _so fucking weak_ \- he watches the hacker talking to Roque.   
  
Jensen seems to be playing a one man game of charades - rubbing across his top lip, waving a flattened hand at shoulder height - while Roque says nothing, standing with his arms crossed.  
  
The two of them have an odd relationship that Cougar really doesn't get. Half the time it seems brotherly, and yet Cougar knows for fucking certain that if it came down to a choice between Roque and Jensen, Roque would choose himself every damned time. So maybe it was more like Jensen was the friend of a brother - Cougar very carefully does not add _boy_ in front of the word _friend_.  
  
  
Instead of the leave that Cougar desperately - _needs_ \- wants, they get bundled into an army hospital. Another tiny cement room they will be held in - the neutral beige walls with framed neutral paintings do nothing to dispel this feeling.  
  
Cougar snarls and snaps at anyone who comes near. The doctors and nurses learn to perform on the most rudimentary of checks because right now Cougar can't promise he won't _hurt_ the next person that touches him unnecessarily.   
  
Jensen shares his room. They were originally split up but Jensen kept sneaking into Cougar's room every time the lights dimmed - sitting on the foot of Cougar's bed and staring at the door; _waiting_ \- and Cougar couldn't sleep a full night without pulling his stitches, trying to _run_ and _get away_.  
  
Clay visits them sometimes. He says it's to make sure they don't skip out early, but Cougar's pretty sure he's beating himself up over the whole _them working alone in Georgia_ thing.  
  
Pooch visits, brings them Jolene's cookies - the only time Cougar's ever seen him share them. But he doesn't stay, the Losers are officially on leave and the driver has a pregnant wife and a little girl that don't get to see him enough as it is.  
  
Roque goes fucking AWOL. No one seems to know where he's gone. Jensen acts suspiciously, dragging his IV out into the hall to make phonecalls. Cougar sometimes hears snatches of the conversations,  
  
 _Where the fuck are you?  
  
Geez, I'm sorry, calm down crazy person!  
  
It's just, fuck man, we're flying out soon.   
  
Jesus! I know! Alright! Fuck, fine, Mr Crabby-Crabby Pants!_  
  
But then Jensen sees him and shuts up, waiting for him to get out of ear shot before he starts up again.  
  
Roque comes back, the night they finally get medically cleared for leave. Jensen laughs - _dramatic motherfucker_ \- and Roque claps a very familiar hat on top of Cougar's luggage. Cougar fingers the brim of it, he wants to say thankyou and he wants to punch both of the conniving motherfuckers for sneaking around behind him. But no one asks how, what, when or where, and instead they bring the alcohol out and have an impromptu celebration.  
  
In a couple of hours two very drunk men - one hacker, one sniper - catch the red eye to Mazatlán.


	5. Chapter 5

When they land, in the airport, Jensen buys a pocket knife. He catches Cougar looking at him and blushes, but says nothing. Not that he has to. It's hard to break habits and Jensen's spent the last two months learning the value of having something small and sharp on you at all times. Cougar knows the feeling well. He physically fucking _aches_ for his rifle when he's away from it.  
  
They spend three days in Mazatlán. And then they get jittery and move on. They follow the coast down, never stopping in one place for more than two days. They lose track of time and sleep in the sun. A lot. Jensen goes a painful shade of red. And blisters. And peels. Then goes through it all over again like he's trying to burn off his past along with his skin.  
  
  
  
It seems like the two of them have to learn each others habits all over again. Jensen forgets about his glasses when he wakes, his shins collect new bruises ever morning. Cougar finds himself touching Jensen. A lot. Nothing overtly sexual or really even noticeable. But they spend every waking (and sleeping) hour together and Cougar always seems to be fucking touching Jensen. A hand on his arm. Knees knocking together as they take another rickety old bus further down the coast. His knuckles brushing past that back of Jensen's neck.  
  
Another habit that Jensen seems to have picked up pops up when they're eating. The hacker is too skinny, all long limbs and visible bones. But when he eats he takes a bite and then hands whatever he's eating to Cougar. He doesn't even realise he's doing it.  
  
What's most annoying about it is that even though Cougar doesn't remember, his body obviously does because he lets Jensen feed him without realising it.  
  
  
Cougar's nightmares resurface with a vengeance. Sometimes he dreams he's trapped in his body, unable to move or speak. Sometimes it's just a small room - not threatening in any way when awake and rational. And sometimes he doesn't remember what jolts him back into reality covered in cold sweat.  
  
Jensen talks a lot, chatters about the scenery and the people and about everything that's not what's going on in his head. When it gets dark he sits quietly, watches the door with an intensity that worries Cougar.  
  
They distract each other the only way they know how. With tight holds and long touches they try to push the dark back.  
  
  
Some time, some where - at this point Cougar honestly doesn't know the date and only vaguely knows what country they're in - Cougar discovers Jensen sitting in their motel room, phone to his ear. He watches the hacker, more out of curiosity than suspicion - Jensen hasn't touched a single computer since leaving America and this is the first time Cougar's seen him with his phone.  
  
After a moment of listening, Jensen stares at the screen. Just looks at it like he's struggling to decide something important. Eventually he snaps it shut with an air of finality. Cougar finds it later, buried in the bottom of Jensen's duffle bag.  
  
There's messages. Multiple fucking messages. Mostly from the colonel. There's a particularly colorful one from Roque and a quiet one from Pooch amongst the swearing and threats from Clay.  
  
For the first time in a long fucking time Cougar looks at the date. Turns out they're about a week overdue back at base. Cougar thinks he might be a little pissed about that.  
  
  
Cougar needs to talk to Jensen. He has a whole speech planned. He's been over and over the possible conversation and worked out every possible detour and escape that Jensen might decide to take. Talking to Jensen requires forethought and sneakiness, the hacker is too fucking good at derailing the conversation otherwise.  
  
In the end, while Cougar is trying to decide the best time of day for his talk, Jensen sighs and says, "We have to go back."  
  
 _Fucker_.  
  
  
  
Going back isn't half as bad Cougar expects. Walking across the asphalt, Jensen is trying to tell him about these kids on the plane and how they were doing _something_ , but he keeps laughing between his words and Cougar has no idea what the hacker is actually telling him.  
  
Clay yells at them. And then yells at them some more. Then sends to them off to get _'a decent fucking feed, didn't you fucking eat, jesus.'_  
  
Jensen orders more pancakes that can fit on one plate and proceeds to make Cougar eat half of them. There's a little more meat on the hacker's bones and he's already started getting his muscles back into the form they used to have.  
  
Cougar watches him sometimes, just watches him interact with other people, or type away at his computer, he masquerades as the guy he was better than Cougar ever could.  
  
  
  
  
Farmland is all Cougar can see. It's a rare fucking change from sand or jungle but at the moment he'd rather be anywhere but here. At least in the sand they'd usually have support, or at the least they wouldn't have split up. Even in the fucking jungle they'd be all connected to each other with comms.  
  
Here they've had to go radio-silent, there's too many fucking foreign signals playing havoc on the comms. Jensen had offered to knock up a short range radio that would be mostly secure, if they could spare the time. But the Colonel had put his foot down, they were on a time limit and comforts like constant radio contact could be sacrificed in favour of getting the job done.  
  
  
Jensen and Clay have been gone for five hours; and Roque is really fucking unhappy with suddenly being in charge. Pooch is the only one keeping it together, Cougar hasn't been separated form Jensen since Georgia so that's ratcheting up his anxiety-meter.  
  
Another hour passes before Jensen and Clay stumble into the secondary rendezvous. Roque, Pooch and Cougar should have been gone the moment the first hour ticked over, but since Clay's got a hole in his leg and Jensen is drooling blood in between outbursts, no one is prepared to start quoting SOP.  
  
The relief Cougar feels at seeing Jensen is so sharp it's an almost physical pain. He doesn't like feeling like that, he decides, watching the fading tail lights of Pooch and Jensen driving off. He'd looked so fucking terrible; slipping in and out of conciousness, babbling too loudly, grinning with his mouth a gaping hole of blood and shattered teeth.  
  
 _Mierda_ , Cougar thinks it's a little un-fucking-fair that he hasn't gotten to kill _anyone_ yet. Clay got all the ones that orchestrated Jensen's dentistry. Roque took out the ones that were looking for them - mostly, Cougar imagines, because he needed to take his frustrations out on _someone_.  
  
The lack of action, _violence_ , has him fucking on edge and internalizing everything. He spends the quiet time after Pooch and Jensen have disappeared into the night patching up Clay's leg.  
  
He very carefully keeps his mind on the mechanics of each stitch - _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_ \- not on the way Jensen's head lolled like a puppet with cut strings - _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_ \- not on the way the hacker's words started slurring into syllables no one could decipher - _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_ \- and definitely not on the amount of blood saturating the front of Jensen's clothes - _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_ \- or the way the blood wouldn't stop flowing from his mouth.  
  
 _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_  
  
"He'll be okay." Clay's voice breaks through Cougar's litany of _thread, push, cross over, pull tight, snip_ and he nods, dipping his hat low. Because Jensen has to be okay. If he's not..  
  
Jensen has to be okay.


	6. Chapter 6

Half a klick.  
  
Five hundred metres.  
  
Fifteen hundred feet.  
  
Cougar could cover the distance in less than a minute.  
  
Only here, in the jungle, it could take twenty minutes to hack through ten metres of vegetation. This knowledge does nothing to ease the soul breaking screams, cries and gunfire coming from upriver.  
  
The fact that they've been ordered to stand down - _do nothing_ \- burns in the back of Cougar's throat. They're to sit down and _listen_ while a town gets wiped off the map. Santa Maria. Fuck. It even sounded like a place that would burn itself into your dreams and onto the pages of history next to My Lai and Acteal.  
  
  
The week following he touches his rifle and nothing else. Jensen sometimes comes beside him, but he can't talk or touch. He feels like he's on fucking fire, like the moment he opens his mouth he'll start screaming and just never stop. Jensen seems to get that.  
  
It's insult to injury, being made to meet up with those _pendejos_. Actually, fuck it all to hell, it's more like being gutted, having salt poured into the gaping mess and then being dragged behind a vehicle until he's mostly dead.  
  
Cougar seethes quietly, only vaguely aware of Jensen talking to Pooch in that low voice. The one he uses when he wants to talk, wants to never stop babbling but something's stopping him from it. Clay's tapping the butt of his M16, the only sign that he's impatient and annoyed about the meetup with the ParSec contingent.  
  
  
Somehow Cougar can't muster up any fucking surprise when one of the _putos_ gets jumpy and opens fire on them. He hears the grunt of someone - _Jensen_ \- getting hit behind him, but he ignores it, adrenaline and rage pumps through his veins and he gets his fucking rifle up.  
  
Cougar stares down the SR25's scope and wishes for a moment that he was the man he used to be. Ten years ago he wouldn't be thinking about who else is going to get shot if he starts firing. Ten years ago he would've squeezed the trigger with a fucking smile on his face and to hell with the consequences.  
  
But he's not that guy. Hasn't been since the moment Clay had picked him up to be a Loser and told him in harshly _You don't get to be the guy who gets my team killed._ Cougar had respected him for that. Respected a leader that was hard, accepted that people would die and knew that as CO it should be his decisions that did it.  
  
So he holsters his weapon and breaks the fucker's jaw. Cougar thinks he might always remember the sweet grinding crunch as it splinters. He's still smiling when Roque pulls him off and shoves him away.  
  
Clay gets between him and his prey and all Cougar wants to do is fucking kill him. The Colonel obviously knows this because he shoves Cougar back but doesn't crowd him; gives him space to get his head screwed back on.  
  
"Go check on Jensen." Clay orders, his voice is harsh. It's not highly surprising to Cougar that Jensen's the one that got shot. Not surprising, but not fucking acceptable either. He looks long and hard at the guy in charge of the ParSec men. _Wade_. One fucking day.  
  
Jensen's whining, blood between his fingers, and dodging Pooch.  
  
"Hey Cougs! Top fucking shot, man." He calls when Cougar gets close. There's something in his voice, under all the layers of praise, a whining _what about me?_ For some reason it annoys Cougar more than it should. _What about the one hundred and sixty eight innocents that these pendejo's executed not seven days ago?_  
  
  
  
They land on base with the promise of immediate leave - _oh god, fucking finally_ \- Cougar doesn't bother packing just hops off one plane and heads straight for the international airport.  
  
It's only when he's ten thousand feet in the air over Texas that he turns to say something to Jensen and realises the hacker isn't with him. He feels bad, terrible maybe if he thinks about it, he can't remember when he last spoke to Jensen.  
  
He remembers being in the jungle - _dios_ will he never forget being in the jungle? - and he remembers the silent trip home. All of them keeping their thoughts to themselves as turbulence jostled them from side to side. But he doesn't remember actually talking to the hacker at all. It makes him angry, overly angry. More than the situation calls for.  
  
He's been around long enough to know that over the top rage is a symptom of something more sinister underneath. But he's also known for a long time that his issues are his alone and as long as he's aware of them then he is fucking fine. So long as he acknowledges that his anger is misplaced and doesn't act on it. He's good and fine. Cougar does good and fine exceptionally well.  
  
  
Mexico doesn't sooth him, not even one little bit. He comes back on edge and if he were anyone else some might say he was twitchy. He hasn't slept properly since Santa Maria. He blames that a little on Jensen. He'd gotten used to Jensen's night vigils. The idea that no one is watching his back is almost as unsettling as the fact that somehow he had begun relying on people other than himself. When the fuck did that happen?  
  
  
  
  
Cougar isn't okay with working with ParSec again. For one, they are a fucking private security outfit consisting of fucking idiots and trigger happy morons. For two, Cougar wants to fucking kill them. Every fucking day.  
  
It's easy to shoot the people on your side. If you'd asked him a month ago he might've answered _What the fuck? No! What sort of question is that? Jesus._  
  
It starts simply. A split second of a ParSec uniform in his sights and all that's running through his mind is it'd be _so_ easy. Turns out it is. Real fucking easy. Each shot is actually easier than the one before.  
  
A small voice in the back of his head wonders if this is the beginning of the path that ends with Cougar on top of a tall building, shooting civilians. But he dismisses it. He has no desire to shoot faceless innocents. He just wants some fucking payback for every sleepless night, and sudden screaming wake up when he had finally gotten some sleep.  
  
Roque seems to get it. Hell, he even grins sometimes - that hard sharp toothed grin - when the 'accidental' and 'unavoidable' happened. Pooch gets tight lipped and disapproving but then, Cougar thinks uncharitably, the driver has always been entirely too soft hearted and forgiving.  
  
Clay calls him on his bullshit. Eventually. Cougar figures it’s more that he's making the Colonel's team look bad than actual disapproval at Cougar's actions.  
  
And Jensen. Well Jensen has been slowly talking less and less to him. Somehow he's missed this until the hacker is completely ignoring him. He doesn't speak to Cougar. Fuck, Jensen ignores him like there's a Cougar shaped hole in the space he occupies. His eyes slide past Cougar like he isn't there.  
  
  
The day before the flight out of the godforsaken country and leave ParSec behind - hopefully for good - Jensen corners him in the showers.  
  
"What the fuck are you doing?" He asks sharply, standing between Cougar and the exit. Cougar says nothing.  
  
"Oh poor fucking you. Like you were the only one there. Fuck you, you think the rest of us like what happened?"  
  
He punctuates each sentence with a shove.  
  
"Or are you just too fucking busy not dealing with this shit to realise that you don't got the fucking monopoly on feeling like shit?"  
  
Cougar fucking hates the term 'dealing'. Like it's a fucking card game, a skill easily learned. Like only a lesser man couldn't 'deal'. Personally, Cougar thinks he's fucking _dealing_ with it just fine. If he's choosing to do that with smouldering rage and violence well that's his own goddamned business. Cougar glares at Jensen, daring him to keep fucking talking. Which he fucking does because Jensen has never been scared off by Cougar's death glares and _doesn't that just make him grind his teeth?_  
  
"For fuck's sake, you've been a total fucking psychopath. You're acting as bad as them."  
  
Cougar shoves Jensen away when he says that. God he wants nothing more than to get in the hacker's face and hit him. Wants to crowd in on him and make Jensen hit him. But Jensen just looks at the floor and backs off, like he knows exactly what Cougar's thinking. Cougar fucking hates how well Jensen can read him.  
  
  
  
  
In San Salvador Cougar wants the fuck out. Wants to be away from every fucking face he's been stuck with the past couple of years. Wants to go back to when they actually finished jobs and weren't at the beck and call of _politics_.  
  
When they get told to stand down. To let this _puto_ go. Cougar _can't_.  
  
He's seen the photos of the villages this guy's been through. Basically enslaving entire communities, taking children as leverage, using them as _incentives_. Cougar will not be responsible for this guy walking free.  
  
In Cougar's defense he does put a bullet in the guy's head before he gets caught. And he thinks he manages to get a message out to Jensen even with all the static fucking with his radio. He takes a little bit of comfort in that as the dead man's lackey's start removing fingernails.  
  
He spits in their faces and tells them, " _Vete a la mierda_."  
  
  
  
Two of his fingers are definitely broken. His thumb flops awkwardly and _aches_. It's nowhere close the worst pain he's felt but it's not improving his fucking disposition. _They're not even doing this in the right order._  
  
They speak again, the guy holding his hand moves early and snaps a third finger. Which is just fucking sloppy. The pain blanks his mind and he watches their mouths move but hears nothing. Not that it matters, the questions, from the way their mouths move and the amateur way they are going about this, are going to be: _Who are you working for? Where is the rest of your team?_  
  
  
  
It's almost a fucking relief when bullets start taking down the men around Cougar. _Almost_. Jensen reaches him first, he's grinning like Cougar hasn't gotten himself fucked up going off mission. Like he doesn't care that they've all been put in danger because of Cougar.  
  
And Cougar's angry. _Dios_ is he angry. He can't stand that he's gotten caught again. He fucking hates that he's being saved. And _fucking Jesus_ he seethes with rage when Jensen looks up from untying his ankles, a grin plastered across his face.  
  
Cougar can't seem to control the rage that shakes him to the point where he's physically vibrating. All he wants to do is wipe that fucking smile off Jensen's face.  
  
When the hacker gets close enough; Cougar punches him. Hits him for his stupid smile, for the way he expresses how he feels, for the way his face always breaks into that fucking relieved look when he sees Cougar.  
  
Jensen looks surprised. Then because the fucker fucking gets Cougar - knows him like nobody ever has or ever should - he looks understanding.  
  
Which just makes Cougar hit him again.  
  
"You stupid son of a bitch." When Jensen hits you it's a beautiful reminder that underneath those glasses and all of that easy going nature is six feet of muscle.  
  
And he doesn't hold anything back.  
  
Somewhere in the background Cougar can hear Pooch yelling at them to stop but it sounds too much like the voice in his own head. Screaming at him, demanding to know what the fuck he's doing; and Cougar is already ignoring _that_ voice.  
  
Cougar should win this fight. Should be able to get Jensen down and hit. (And hit and hit) But - and he knows this when he isn't off his face with rage - fighting angrily ruins your judgement. So when Jensen feints, Cougar sees it as an actual move - a shitty move that will win him this fight - and goes in for the kill.  
  
Only a fist comes out of nowhere and stops him. The resounding crunch and grind of his nose breaking pretty much blows everything out of his mind. His eyes sting and water as blood gushes down his chin and runs down the back of his throat.  
  
 _puta madre_  
  
The suddenness, the fucking _surprise_ of it blanks his mind, for the moment his rage dissipates. Half of Jensen's face is swelling but the blood on his knuckles is Cougar's and he doesn't look even the least bit sorry about it.  
  
That maybe calms Cougar down better than a broken nose.  
  
  
  
A moment later Jensen's up in his face; grabbing his head not fucking gently at all and tilting it up.  
  
"Here, fuck, let me," His thumbs press against the sides of Cougar's nose and **fuck**. "Just let me pop it back straight, stupid."  
  
Jensen's voice says Cougar is a five year old who’s burnt himself directly after being told that fire was hot. That just pisses him off all over again.  
  
So it's mostly out of spite that when a guy comes up behind Jensen, Cougar shoots too close to the hacker. And okay. He maybe even feels bad about the way Jensen grabs at his ear and yells _fuck_.  
  
  
  
Cougar never hears what Pooch says to Clay, he wasn't talking to them anymore.  
  
The driver had dusted off Jensen's glasses, handed them back to the hacker like someone approaching a wild animal and then he yelled at them both. Then grumbled at them both. Then bitched at them.  
  
And then finally ignored them both in favour of grumbling to himself about the two of them trying to fight to the death. Which - fuck you Pooch - if they were seriously trying to do that one, or more likely both of them, would be dead by now. The driver says he won't talk to either of them _until they apologise_. To which Cougar repeats, _fuck you Pooch_.  
  
  
  
When they regroup, Roque gets a hold of him and starts taping his fingers back to straight. His hands are gentle as his words try to peel the paint from the walls.  
  
"You're a fucking moron. Do I look like a goddamn six year old? Wanting to play hide and go - fucking - seek in an entire goddam city? Jesus _Christ_ , kill yourself on your own time. _Goddamn_."  
  
In between the swearing and the bitching he offers to help _disappear_ Jensen. Which is nice. Or well it would be if Cougar wasn't so sure that Roque was actually serious. Still it's nice to hear the words under the threat to kill Jensen; _I'm on your side, buddy_.  
  
  
  
Jensen doesn't speak to him until just before they board the plane to leave this shitty country. Cougar wishes he wasn't constantly surprised by the way Jensen always manages to get him alone - even if he has no idea how the hacker does it. Fucking hell, it's not easy to get alone time even for just yourself and yet Jensen does this on a regular fucking basis.  
  
"You are the literally biggest asshole I know."  
  
That's actually saying a lot, considering all the people Jensen knows.  
  
"Well not literally. Metaphorically? Metaphorically just makes it sound like I don't mean it. And I do mean it."  
  
A dark powder burn runs across the side of his cheek, Cougar can't stop looking at it.  
  
"You _are_ the biggest asshole I know. And I know a lot of assholes. Fuck man, I work with _Roque_."  
  
Cougar says nothing. Carefully doesn't think about anything.  
  
"And you keep going off to do your fucking lone wolf thing. I bet right now you're ignoring the fuck out of me and thinking in Spanish."  
  
 _Cougar no piensa en español. Joder._ Fuck.  
  
Jensen sighs; looks upwards like he's frustrated and angry and sad and tired and, is that _disappointment_ that Cougar sees?  
  
"Okay." Jensen breathes the word like something big has just been decided without Cougar.  
  
"Okay, it's fine." There's no inflection in his words, it throws Cougar a little. Some of Jensen's best battles have been fought and won with just words. The hacker keeps his sharp and quick. Using them to hide things. To inspire, amuse and decimate.  
  
To hear Jensen speaking plainly, with no emotion? It unsettles Cougar. _A lot_.  
  
Jensen ignores Cougar's silence like he always has. Sometimes Cougar wonders if Jensen can actually _hear_ what he's thinking. What he's feeling. The thought of that makes Cougar want to bolt for the fucking border. Jensen just hitches his duffle's strap higher on his shoulder and looks - stares - at Cougar.  
  
His glasses sit crookedly a top his nose; it's Cougar's handy work - _the deep purple and blue swelling_ \- that keeps them permanently askew on his face.  
  
"Have a nice leave." The fucker says it like he actually fucking _means_ it. Then turns and walks away. What the fuck.  
  
It takes most of the plane trip home for Cougar to realise he's just been dumped. Like a fucking highly strung girl whose ass just isn't worth the drama.  
  
He glares across the aisle at Jensen. If anyone was going to be the fucking girl it would be Jensen. With his _talking_. And his love of _shiny_ things. And the way the fucker always went on about _feelings_. Fuck you, Cougar was the man. End of discussion.  
  
Clay stares at them like he's creating his very own aneurysm trying to work out what's going on between the two of them. Good luck with that Colonel, Cougar's been a part of this thing for years and still has no fucking clue what's going on.  
  
When they land Cougar shoves past everyone to get out of the fucking plane. _To just get the fuck out._ As he walks away he swears he can feel Jensen's eyes burning holes into his back.


	7. Chapter 7

He forgets his english and fucks _mujer turistas_. If their hair is blonde and they laugh too loudly. Well. There's no one here to compare.  
  
When the _turista_ sex stops distracting him from the long dark hours - the fucking hole in his chest - he spends his nights wrapped around himself. Trying to forget something he threw away. And it _hurts_   
  
No one ever told him it would be like this. Liking - _loving_ \- someone was supposed to be candy apples and roses. Not something tied to your guts ripping and tearing them out as you got further apart.   
  
  
He finds himself staring at his cellphone. The wallpaper is a bright pink monstrosity that Jensen picked. And Cougar doesn't know how to change it. Doesn't know if he _wants_ to change it. He doesn't even know why he _has_ a cellphone. These days it's just a glorified alarm clock; one that Cougar doesn't really need.  
  
Once it might've been used twenty times in a fucking hour. Once it might've received all manner of texts from Jensen, three feet away down the bar. Maybe it's still full of texts that Cougar hasn't, _can't_ , delete. Even though the majority of them are silly and senseless. _operation beer complete - returning to base_  
  
  
 **444 - 6 - space - 7777 - 666 - 777 - 777 - 999**  
  
 _im sorry_  
  
It takes him a day and a half to press send. A day and a half of lying on his side in a shitty _hot_ motel room just wanting to stop feeling anything.  
  
Predictably Jensen's reply comes back almost before Cougar's cell confirms the text has been sent.  
  
 _so you bloody well should be_  
  
Cougar wonders what Jensen's watching that makes him phrase it like that. Probably something british. It's equal parts of annoyance and fondness that he can even fucking guess that.   
  
_sorry_ , he texts back the next morning.  
  
 _I'm still angry with you. LIKE TOTALLY._  
  
This time Cougar actually looks forward to his leave ending.  
  
  
  
Jensen ignores him. _For three fucking days_. Then somehow Cougar is fucking lo-jacked and Jensen is following him to the gun range in his fucking boxers.  
  
Cougar is currently in sniper mode. In this state of mind Cougar can have and has had mortars go off danger close and not noticed them. Not even _flinched_ as dirt and shrapnel scattered in the air. This skill comes in handy, in a lot of situations.  
  
When Cougar has six feet of almost completely bare skin sprawled out beside him, he sings praises to baby fucking Jesus for the skill. It's skin he hasn't touched for months. Skin he hasn't been _allowed_ to touch for - fucking - ever.   
  
Cougar doesn't get how Jensen gets away with half the shit he does. Like now. Heading to the gun range they pass all manners of rank with Jensen dressed in just his boxers and combat boots. Which Cougar is not thinking about in anyway but a purely observational way. Thankyou very much.  
  
He's carrying a set of binos around his neck, has a spare mag for Cougar tucked into his waistband and the only comments they get are jokes.  
  
 _Lose a bet corporal?_ \- which they get an alarming amount of times. A few wolf whistles. One marriage proposal - sarcastically from one of the motor pool engineers who may or may not be a lesbian. And a couple _Going to your execution hey Jensen?_  
  
But no one stops them. Cougar wants to fucking bottle whatever it is about Jensen that makes people just hand-wave his antics. There'd probably be a thriving fucking market for liquid shenanigans.  
  
  
  
  
They're taking fucking baby steps. Cougar feels like he fucking four, still fucking unsure of his balance and the way everything works. Then they get sent to Honduras.   
  
Cougar doesn't want to talk about Honduras. Definitely doesn't want to fucking think about it.   
  
Doesn't want to think about the grunt of pain coming over the comms. Doesn't want to think of Jensen's breathless _chatter_ as he tried to walk on a fucking broken leg. Doesn't want to think about arguing with Clay over who stayed behind with Pooch. Doesn't want to think about listening to Jensen digging himself a motherfucking metaphorical grave aggravating a hair-trigger general.   
  
Will never _ever_ be fucking thinking of finding Jensen beating the guy to death. Or the way he doesn't even fucking notice them until Clay pulls him off what's left of the general. And the hacker had stumbled and would've fucking fallen if Cougar hadn't been _right fucking there_ because Jensen's fucking leg is fucking broken and _Jesus_.   
  
Jensen's eyes didn't focus on anything, just stared at the gun in his hands. A sweet piece to be fucking sure but not worth the white knuckled death grip Jensen has on it.   
  
Clay radios Roque and Cougar tries to fucking assess Jensen. Which would be so much more easier if he'd fucking talk to him. Broken fingers? Check. Broken leg? Check. His pupils are uneven, blood trickles the side of his face and Cougar follows the trail to a small hole above his ear. It feels like an honest to God gut punch following the rippled skin - _the fucking skull_ \- to its hard metal ending; just behind his ear, a large lump.  
  
"My head hurts." It's the first thing Jensen has said since they broke in here. He's fairly unresponsive as Cougar gets his knife, flicking out the blade in a practiced movement, even though it's fucking awkward doing it one handed, trying to hold Jensen upright with the other. Cougar feels the slug _just under the fucking skin_ ; fingertips gently circling it, trying to decide which way was best to cut it out.   
  
"Just fucking get it out." Jensen groans. Cougar presses the tip of his knife, blood welling bright as Jensen presses against him, almost folding up. "Jesus, just get it out."  
  
It's a close call. Only it's fucking not because a close call is when a mortar goes off and you get showered in dirt but after it everyone relaxes and fucking laughs their asses off as adrenaline soars through their veins.   
  
It's not this. Cougar doesn't have a word for what digging a .44 slug out of his best friend's skull is.  
  
  
Jensen stays fucking quiet after that. Cougar had finally fucking pried the revolver out of his bent fucking claw of a hand, but Jensen had fucking grabbed it right back again with his good hand. Even now he's playing with it, spinning the cylinder and flinching every time he pulls the trigger.   
  
Cougar bumps his knee against the hacker's. His unshot one against Jensen's unfucked one. It distracts Jensen from playing with the fucking gun for five fucking seconds but he goes back to it too soon. Cougar clenches his fist, the metal slug he's holding has a surprising heft to it and cuts into Cougar's palm. It maybe hurts more than the fucking throb of his calf.  
  
"Hey," Cougar says quietly, leaning against Jensen's shoulder, bumping him more harshly than before. "You okay?"  
  
Jensen stops what he's doing and looks at him. Head cocked to one side like for one second he might actually tell the truth. Then he smiles overly bright and speaks cheerily.  
  
"Me? Yeah. I'm Batman! I'm all sorts of indestructible. It's pretty much my best skill. That and my god like tech skills. And my striking physique. Aaaaand all of this" He gestures in a circular motion around his face, which would probably be more effective if the skin on his nose wasn't split and his face wasn't beat to hell.   
  
"Yeeeah, I'm pretty much ever marvel superhero rolled into one awesome package." He shrugs a little, playing into the fucking joke like Cougar's a rapt audience. "Or, on a stretch, I think I'd even make a pretty good Wonder Woman."   
  
Cougar thinks he might fucking hate him for that. Hates the fake noise like he hates the quiet. And that his fingertips keep fucking tingling with the feel of hard metal under soft skin. It feels like bare chance and blind luck and Cougar _fucking hates it._  
  
  
  
  
It seems like it comes out of nowhere. Only it really fucking doesn't. And okay, Cougar's noticed that Jensen wasn't one hundred per cent A-OK. But it's not like he can go 'hey man you okay? Let's talk about feelings.' Cougar doesn't do his own fucking feelings let alone playing _sharing is caring_ with someone else's.   
  
  
The fourth time Jensen forgets his gun in an extremely noticeable manner, Roque gets hurt. Not badly, just a graze. But as soon as everything is over Cougar finds himself shoving Roque back as he elbows Jensen out of the way. Because no matter how fucking scary Roque is when he's hurt, angry and in the mood for some serious blaming and maiming, Jensen doesn't back down. Just gets right back in Roque's face and yells back.  
  
And _madre de dios_ Cougar is too fucking small to be playing fucking pinball between the two of them.  
  
  
The time _after_ that, it takes Cougar twenty minutes to get back to the safe house after getting the fucking call. He never saw what happened and by the time he gets back Roque and Clay are loading Jensen onto the flatbed of a pickup.   
  
"Watch his fucking head!" Roque snarls as Clay fumbles, losing his grip on Jensen's sleeves.  
  
Cougar drops his rifle, runs over to grab a limb and help with the awkward slide - lift to get the hacker up. Jensen barely makes a noise, even when his ankle slams against the tailgate so hard he can almost hear the bone threatening to crack.  
  
"Fucking idiot." Roque mutters as he clambers up onto the tray, hands sinking quickly into the red covering Jensen's stomach.  
  
Jensen isn't just pale, in the moonlight he's fucking grey. The blood staining him is just a dark shadow that keeps growing despite the pressure Roque's applying.  
  
"You got everything you need from the house?" Clay snaps. "We ain't coming back for it."  
  
Cougar looks back at the house, all his spare mags and his most comfortable pair of jeans are still in there.  
  
"No, nothing I need." He answers, picking up his rifle and tossing it down next to Jensen.   
  
_The sights on it will definitely be fucked by now_ , he thinks, climbing up the front to lift Jensen's head gently onto his lap.  
  
 _imsorryimsorryimsorry_  
  
Cougar bites back any harsh words and shoves down the emotions that are fighting to burst to the surface.  
  
"I will make you re-set all my sights." He says softly, bent over the hacker, mouth close to his ear so he fucking _hears_ it.  
  
 _imsorryimsorryimsorry_  
  
Jensen makes it sound like one word. Like a prayer. Like a fucking explanation. And Cougar is starting to figure out what might've fucking happened. Even if the whole forgetting your fucking gun was something that Cougar couldn't even remotely begin to fathom.   
  
The faces of Roque and Clay are identical masks of grimness with jaws clenched so tightly their teeth should be aching. Cougar's seen wounds like this before. Knows nearly to the fucking exact decimal what percentage Jensen has of survival. Knows no amount of yelling is going to stop the bleeding or fix whatever's been fucked up inside.  
  
Cougar shoves down rage, disappointment and worry; all of them vying for top fucking emotion in his head. Instead he just whispers over the _imsorryimsorryimsorry_.  
  
" _Viva, asi que podemos discutir acerca de ello luego._ "  
  
Jensen speaks, the words carefully and painfully spoken between bloody teeth. Cougar wouldn't have heard them at all if he hadn't been so damned close to Jensen's mouth.  
  
"You know unless you're swearing at me, I never know what you're saying to me."

 

And Cougar giggles even though he wants to break every fucking tooth in the hacker's face.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Viva, asi que podemos discutir acerca de ello luego. online!translates to   
> live, so we can argue about it later


	8. Chapter 8

Clay fucking watches him. All the fucking time. The constant fucking watching makes Cougar's skin crawl; makes him want to bolt - just fucking run. 

He's watching Jensen too but Cougar doesn't give a fuck about that. 

Clay fucking watches them both like a vulture waiting for a dying animal to just give up the fucking ghost and die. Like he wants to sit them down and make them explain every intimate detail of themselves. And it's really none of his fucking business. 

Jensen keeps to himself, both in and out of work. He seems to realise that everyone's more than a little pissed at him. So he hunches his shoulders and looks like he wants to fold into his computer and Cougar doesn't say a damned thing.

In fact, Cougar's so busy not being fucking angry that it takes him six months to realise that he is angry. Real fucking angry. Full on wants to punch his fucking face in angry. Like they hadn't already done that dance and found it fixed nothing.

So he contents himself with forcibly reminding Jensen of his goddamn gun issue. And when the fucker hides in the safe house's basement making noises of oh, the cold down there is good for the equipment, Cougar puts the hacker's M4 down there with him. Gives Jensen a hard look as he slams the butt down on the floor.

Later he will shove Jensen's prize fucking Honduran forty-four down the hacker's fucking pants; just so he doesn't forget about it.

 

It happens so fucking quickly. They are all still fucking disorientated and stumbling around when their attackers come in. Their hands are too soon tied, shoved to their knees they watch as the intruders search the house. 

The gun fire that comes from the basement and scatters the intruders is a beautiful fucking sound.

But the silence that follows quickly after makes dread coil deep in Cougar's gut.

The second volley of gunfire is the most beautiful sound Cougar has ever heard.

Then they set the house on fire.

Cougar kind of hears Pooch yelling, but the sound that's filling his ears is the crackling roar of a fire growing at an alarming rate.

Once in Afghanistan Cougar laughed as Roque shook a whining Jensen. Blood dribbled from under Jensen's kevlar and Roque got in the way of the medics; yelling at Jensen for not looking after himself.

Cougar imagines he can feel the heatwaves coming off the impromptu crematorium.

When Jensen came into their group and everyone got technological goodies. Saving Pooch's life didn't endear the kid to Pooch half as much as a phone that he could use to call Jolene from anywhere in the world.

Cougar is being shoved. He can feel that. He guesses.

Once Roque grinned at Jensen and the kid didn't sleep properly for a fucking week. "Dude, I think I might've said something kind of funny." He had said half grinning, half looking over his shoulder. "But, seriously, that grin? A fucking lot like the grin he uses when Pooch tells him to pay attention because my life is in jeopardy. Jesus!"

The zip ties pull and pinch at his wrists, they twist and burn his skin. This is what Cougar focuses on.

There's a rumour that when Jensen was in basic he beat the ever loving shit out of a green beret. This is generally dismissed by everyone, mostly because he should've been shitcanned if it was true. But Cougar has seen the grainy footage. Jensen's sister had showed it to him, the look in her eye said this is what happens when you fuck with one of us. The copy on Jack's computer was the only copy of the security feed left after a mysterious virus wiped out every other one. Eye Of The Tiger played over it - Jensen apparently had no sense of shame - and Jack had stood behind Cougar as he watched it with a very grim smile on her face. And Cougar understands this was once her husband.

They're being dragged out of the van. Walked into a warehouse.

Of all the scars Jensen had, the puckered, badly healed circle high on his shoulder was Cougar's favourite. They'd stopped the blood with a ripped up shirt and held it all together with duct tape. Unable to do much more than that; Roque, Cougar and Jensen had spent five days hiding while a city tore itself apart looking for them.

The guy pushing him stops paying attention for a split second and Cougar acts. It's fucking satisfying breaking the guy's neck. It's maybe more satisfying when the first punch hits Cougar. Or the boot in his fucking back. The fucking blackness of unconsciousness seems to take forever to come. 

He hopes he never wakes up.

 

When Cougar wakes up he's half convinced he's dead and in Hell. In the end the thing that convinces him isn't the pain (he's fairly fucking sure Hell will hurt), isn't the sound of gunfire and screams he can hear (Hell for Cougar is likely to unfold on a battlefield; the only place he's disgustingly useful)

No. In the end it's Jensen. He should be burnt and buried under a fire gutted house, but somehow he's crouched over Cougar saying "Hey buddy, you look like shit." 

Then helping him sit up, his hands warm over the bruises on Cougar's back. 

"I'm sorry, I'm not doing it on purpose." Jensen mumbles and Cougar's trying to wrap his head around how Jensen is still alive. His mouth half smiles, ready to fucking believe he's alive and Cougar suddenly doesn't give a fuck about Clay covering from the other side of the room. He reaches his hands up and grips Jensen's jaw.

He feels fucking real. Soot rubs off on his fingers and Cougar starts laughing. It hurts fucking everything but he feels good and a-fucking-live. Jensen grins and chuckles along, even though he doesn't get what Cougar finds so funny.

Because if Jensen is alive and here then Cougar isn't in Hell, and. Fuck, maybe Jensen is Batman. Or Wonder Woman. Or who ever the fuck he claimed to be. Cougar doesn't care, because he's alive.

And for once they have time.

 

He doesn't sift through the burnt wreckage of the 'safe' house. 

For one, walking is an issue with all the fucking bruises upon bruises he's collected; every part of him aches even when he's just sitting on the curb waiting for Pooch to bring a vehicle for him to lay down and die in.

For two, he has no desire to see exactly how fucking dead Jensen should be. His brain has already done a good job of that. It really doesn't fucking need visual aids.

Later Jensen will talk, long run on sentences that go down confusingly random tangents and Cougar will listen. And Roque will make some inappropriate comment that will inevitably make them all laugh. 

 

Their leave papers take just over a week to come through. Cougar drags Jensen with him to spend hours on the gun range. Sometimes all of the day just shooting and giving their fingers blisters. 

They haven't really talked about anything. The acknowledgement of a problem doesn't mean that they're suddenly going to be swapping chapsticks and gossiping in bathrooms. But Jensen whines about his calloused calluses and no one pulls attention to the fact that he's stopped flinching at that particular click the firing pin makes when the gun goes empty.

Then Jensen makes Cougar spend his nights playing Call of Duty. And when Cougar finally gets okay at not being fucking killed straight a-fucking-way, Jensen introduces alcohol into the mix. Because apparently you can't claim to be good at gaming until you can do it balls to the wall, fuck-off drunk. Direct fucking quote. 

When the papers finally comes through Cougar and Jensen spend two weeks sleeping on the beachside in Cancun. It's touristy as fuck but when Jensen sleeps, drooling on Cougar's shoulder, on the flight back, Cougar grins at the sunburnt face with what is possibly the worst sunglasses tan in the history of stupid tans - sunglasses shaped like stars will never be dignified, your argument is invalid. Then gives away those hideous glasses to the kid in the seat across the aisle, because when Jensen wakes up he's going to want them back and the ensuing battle is something Cougar looks forward to.

 

Peshawar is the nicest place they've been dropped since they were deployed a month and half ago. Which isn't a fucking glowing recommendation if Cougar is being asked. It's so close to the border that they are all practically itching to just fucking cross over and fuck some shit up. 

So they play cards in the open as the desert slowly cools. Roque is winning. But then he was the one who shuffled the cards. And the ace up Cougar's sleeve has been made redundant because it has a different goddamned backing to the set they're using. Damn Jensen and his card destroying activities last night. 

 

Later Jensen pulls his computer apart; mumbling goddamn piece of CIA shit, poker algorithms are simple and threatening to rebuild the whole fucking thing. Like he's going to find new computer parts on the Pakistani border.

"I will use fucking paperclips and chewing gum if I have to."

Cougar watches him, swearing at the inadequacies of military spec equipment. 

Jensen takes the computer apart with the same enthusiasm he uses with most of his extracurricular activities.

Like when Jensen decides to end every one of Clay's comm transmissions with Like a Boss.

Or when they're being briefed on peace-keeping missions that require assassinations and Jensen serenades them with "It's like RAY-EE-AAAIN on you wedding day!" at least twice after being told to shut it.

Or like now when he's looking at Cougar over the guts of a very expensive, irreplaceable computer.

When Cougar questions him on why he goes to so much effort for just a little bit fun, the hacker actually looks at him, serious, before answering.

"It's like that saying about stopping to smell the roses."

"Roses?"

"Well." He says, flipping the plastic cover over to keep the screws in it. "Whatever floats your boat."

"So when you're," Cougar waves his hand around, trying to think of a nice synonym for being a fucking crazy person . Antics just doesn't seem to cut it.

"Yup, rose smelling. Dude," He looks up, gesturing wildly with something that looks very breakable. "You gotta try it sometime. You are so fucking tense I getta headache looking at you."

Cougar think Jensen probably has a point. It's funny how even though they're a million miles from anywhere that remotely resembles home, Cougar feels calmer here than he has anywhere else. In fucking years. 

That being said. There is no fucking way Jensen is ever going to be able to upgrade that computer.

"It can be done! We have the technology!"

Cougar is not sure a plastic spork and whatever Jensen has in his kit can be classified as 'the technology'.

"Hey, fuck you. My kit is well stocked. Why you gotta be like that man? No faith!"

Jensen stops rooting around in his gear and straightens up. Puffs out a breath of air and looks shiftily at the electronic mess he's made.

"Okay. Well, I can still put it back together, the way it was. The way god intended. I guess. A mean, mean, technology hating god."

Cougar had always passed Jensen's antics off as some sort of involuntary tic. Like tourette's but instead of uncontrollable noises and spasms, Jensen had like an uncontrollable urge to partake in shenanigans. It hadn't occurred to him that it was something the hacker had actually put a bit of thought into. Let alone a lot of thought. 

Cougar thinks as he sits on the bunk opposite Jensen, handing him screws and parts as required; he should probably learn something from that. 

 

The chopper's blades make a familiar background noise, a steady whump whump whump, almost drowning out all the bitching Roque's doing over Cougar's hat.

Like after all these years Cougar is suddenly going to stop wearing it. 

Like they're going to be dropped off and the locals are going to think Roque is their long lost son. 

Like between Cougar's long hair and his blond, blond friend the hats going to be the thing that gives away the secret that they're not actually from around here.

Cougar could give a million snappy, snarly, snarky remarks to all of Roque's bitch facing. But instead he just smiles lazily and says,

"Hell, Roque, your Pashtun's so rusty they'll probably figure you for a tourist anyway."

Jensen fucking giggles and Roque scowls but can't argue with that because his pashtu does sound a lot like he's come to rape their daughters even when he's just wishing them good morning. 

Jensen leans up against Cougar and drapes an arm over his shoulder.

"Would you mind taking our photo..?" Cougar grins widely as Roque fingers his gun.

"Which way to terrorist please?" Jensen manages to say before dissolving into laughter.

And Cougar laughs and plays along with him because right now everything feels right. Roque cocks his gun while bitching grumpily and Cougar laughs harder, thinking it sounds like home. 

Hell, maybe home wasn't a place. Maybe home was people and moments in time like these. 

And maybe, just fucking maybe, teasing the hell out of Roque was like stopping to smell the roses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the working title for this story was always This Monster (which i still think wouldve been appropriate) and was brought into fruition by the encouragement of one of my favourite writers, one of my favourite canadians and in general one of those special people for whom i'd totally dispose of a body for without question; roy, you will always be one of my favourite people

**Author's Note:**

> and thus begins the same story from someone elses eyes


End file.
